(SportsNetwork.com) – The New York Islanders will open up a five-game road
trip out west on Thursday night, with the first stop coming against the
Colorado Avalanche.
The Islanders will be looking to bounce back from a 4-3 loss to the Winnipeg
Jets on Tuesday. New York received second-period goals from John Tavares and
Mikhail Grabovski to tie the contest, but the Jets got the game-winner at the
3:31 mark of the third period.
“In the third we didn’t pay the price and we weren’t gritty,” Tavares said.
“We battled back, but we didn’t have a great third.”
Brock Nelson had a goal, Johnny Boychuk notched a pair of assists and Jaroslav
Halak made 26 saves.
Halak made his first start in three games after allowing five goals on 23
shots in a loss to Toronto on Oct. 21. Though he took another loss, his club
did him no favors when Nikolay Kulemin received a boarding major and game
misconduct in the second period, with Winnipeg scoring twice on the resulting
power play.
The Islanders had a modest two-game winning streak halted and fell to 6-3-0 on
the season.
Colorado, meanwhile, has lost six of its past seven, though it has managed a
point in four straight. The Avalanche are 1-0-3 over that time following a
shootout loss to San Jose on Tuesday.
The Avs faced 51 shots in the 3-2 loss, with Semyon Varlamov notching 49 saves
to fall two short of matching current head coach Patrick Roy’s club record for
the most saves in one game that was set on Dec. 10, 1997.
Varlamov, though, was bested in the shootout by Patrick Marleau and Joe
Pavelski, while Colorado’s Alex Tanguay and Matt Duchene had their tie-
breaking chances denied.
Tanguay had a goal in regulation to run his point streak to six straight games
(4 goals, 2 assists) and Gabriel Landeskog also scored.
“This is very disappointing. We finally came out in the third and played our
game. We have to keep playing like this from the start,” noted Landeskog.
The Islanders are 5-1-1 in their past seven meetings with the Avalanche, with
the lone regulation setback coming in the most recent encounter on Feb. 8 of
last season on Long Island.
New York is 3-0-2 with a tie in its past six trips to Colorado.
