For a second straight game, the New York Islanders were trailing 2-0 heading into the third period. For a second straight night, they reeled off four goals in the final 20 minutes to take all two points and keep a once-improbable, now-burgeoning playoff push very much alive.
After beating the defending Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers 4-2 on Sunday night, the Islanders went into Pittsburgh and overturned a two-goal deficit against the Penguins behind third-period goals from Kyle Palmieri, Noah Dobson, Pierre Engvall, an empty-netter from Simon Holmstrom.
“We just need to be resilient, and that is what this group is,” head coach Patrick Roy said. “This is a great group. They care, they want to win… A good sign is even when it was 4-2 for us, they kept going at the end. That’s the future we’re trying to put in place. I love the way the guys are paying right now.
Many, including this writer, wrote off the Islanders when they lagged six, eight points behind the second and final Wild Card playoff berth in the Eastern Conference, which prompted the trading of long-time center Brock Nelson. However, the Islanders have won six of their last ten, with points in seven of them.
The two-straight comeback wins, coupled with some help on the out-of-town scoreboard, has them just three points out of the final playoff spot owned by the Montreal Canadiens, with one team — the New York Rangers — sitting between them. Those Rangers, who have 72 points compared to the Islanders’ 70, have also played two more games.
Does this script sound familiar? Because it should.
In each of the last two seasons, the Islanders scrambled late down the stretch of the regular season to sneak into the playoffs. Now, even those in the locker room have that same feeling of years past.
“Every season’s different, but we’ve found ourselves the last couple years in this situation,” Dobson said. “This is a veteran group, and we know what it takes at this time of year. It’s not always pretty, but you have to find a way and dig deep.”
Suddenly, a team that had been starving for consistency all season has found a surge of confidence with just 15 games remaining.
“Confidence is a scary thing this time of year, if you can find it,” Dobson said. “If you have that belief, no matter how the game is going, that you can come back to win, that’s huge. That’s two in a row. Obviously, you don’t want to be trailing every night, but just showing that if we’re down, we can find our way back and stick with it, good things will happen.”
Whether they admit it or not, it is officially scoreboard-watching season. One of the first things Roy did was confirm that the Detroit Red Wings (now with 70 points and one more game played than the Islanders) lost to the Washington Capitals. They even caught the very end of the Rangers game — a 2-1 loss to the Calgary Flames.
“The guys are working hard, they’re doing a lot of good things,” Roy said. “We have to stay calm and believe in what we’re doing and things are turning around. That’s exactly what happened… We need to focus on ourselves. There’s a lot of hockey to be played.”
