Tavares OT Winner Leads Isles to 5th Straight Victory

photo by thestar

Tonight, our Islanders managed to win their fifth straight game by score of 3-2 in overtime.  Here are some of my notes from the game:

-I thought Anders Lee was arguably the teams best forward tonight.  He made his presence felt both with his nice little spin move goal to kick off the scoring.  Then, he had his first fight at the end of the second period against the Capitals Tom Wilson, and really held his own against someone with a lot more experience than him in this area.  After the game, some players said that the fight really gave the team a spark at the time that they needed.

-Although he gave up a couple goals, I thought Halak had a solid game.

-The penalty kill struggled for the first time in a little while tonight.  The Capitals power play is probably one of the more predictable in the league and yet the penalty kill wasn't just beat by it once but twice.  This is something they are going to need to correct in order to give them the best opportunity to sweep the home and home on Friday.

-Another solid game from Ryan Strome who just continues getting better.

-Even though they got two power play goals tonight, it still needs to be better.  Far to often does it take them over half the time to just gain the zone which doesn't give the team much time to get anything done.

-The team seemed to fall into some old bad habits in the third and were fortunate that it didn't come back to haunt them.  At times they were caught sitting back instead of continuing to push the play which is the complete opposite of what makes them successful.

With their win tonight, the Islanders have now won 5 in a row and 10 of their last 11.  While this streak of course won't last forever, the team is sure providing one heck of a ride for fans to be apart of.

Next Game: Friday 5PM @ Washington