ELMONT, N.Y. — Tomas Tatar scored the only goal of the shootout to lift the Seattle Kraken to a 2-1 victory over a sloppy New York Islanders on Tuesday night at UBS Arena, crowning Philipp Grubauer the winner of a goalie battle with Ilya Sorokin after a two-month layoff.
The Seattle netminder made 25 saves in regulation and overtime before stopping Oliver Wahlstrom, Bo Horvat, and Mathew Barzal in the shootout. He also stoned Horvat twice in overtime to keep a 1-1 game level.
“This wasn’t our best, to be honest with you,” Horvat said. “We’ve played better games. It was nice to get a point but obviously would have been nicer to get two.”
Kyle Palmieri, who scored the lone regulation goal for the Islanders, gave the Kraken a man advantage 3:11 into overtime with a neutral zone trip. As New York (22-19-12) managed to defend it, Seattle negated its man advantage when Jaden Schwartz slashed Scott Mayfield.
For most of the night, the Islanders had no business being in the game but netminder Ilya Sorokin stood on his head for most of the night, turning away 29 of 30 shots behind a defense that played its part in committing 23 giveaways.
“I don’t think any one of us could be happy about this performance,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said. “We certainly need to be better managing the puck. We needed to simplify our game, we were forcing things when we didn’t have to.”
Just seconds after being dumped in the Islanders’ zone by Ryan Pulock, Matty Beneirs got immediate retribution in transition 5:27 into the game when he sniped a wrister past Sorokin to give the Kraken an early lead after New York did little with a 4-on-3 rush.
“As soon as they got their hands on the puck, they were stretching the play,” Roy said. “I thought we could have made a better decision with that puck to create that 4-on-3.”
The 1-0 advantage carried into the second after an Islanders power-play that looked far from conjunction squandered a four-minute man advantage after Andre Burakovsky high-sticked Jean-Gabriel Pageau with 5:36 left in the first.
Their power play did come through late in a second period in which they were dominated during the early portions. After Yanni Gourde elbowed Casey Cizikas, which was called a boarding penalty, Barzal found Palmieri in front with 5:23 remaining in the frame to knot things up heading into the final stanza.
