Islanders defeat Flyers but lose Casey Cizikas to injury
Casey Cizikas of the Islanders is helped off the ice by teammates Matt Martin and Leo Komarov during the first period against the Philadelphia Flyers at Barclays Center on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Islanders expect everything to be close in this playoff push, professing to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
So, it wasn’t surprising to see a first-period, three-goal lead completely evaporate against the Flyers, especially with the Islanders playing most of the game without sparkplug center Casey Cizikas. But neither was it surprising that, when it got the most uncomfortable, the Islanders responded with the winning goal just 51 seconds after the Flyers tied it, earning a 5-3 victory on Tuesday night at Barclays Center in their lone home game in a stretch of seven games. Both teams were playing on back-to-back nights.
“We’ve played in those tight spots a lot,” said defenseman Ryan Pulock, whose slap shot with 40.4 seconds left in regulation regained a 4-3 lead. “We don’t get too high, we don’t get too low and you see that when they tie it up late, we don’t pack it in. We go back out there and have a huge shift.”
Leo Komarov added an empty-netter with 3.8 seconds to go after Sean Couturier had tied it at 3-3 at 18:28 with the Flyers skating six-on-five.
“That’s a big, extra point there, not allowing that to go to overtime,” captain Anders Lee said. “We know how tight this is. This might be one we think about later on.”
The Islanders (33-16-6) maintained their hold on third place in the Metropolitan Division, improving their recent run to 5-1-2. They moved three points ahead of the Flyers (31-19-7), who are still on an 8-3-1 run, and moved within two points of the second-place Penguins, who lost, 2-1, in overtime to the visiting Lightning.
The Islanders were coming off Monday night’s 5-3 win at Washington over the Metropolitan Division leaders while the Flyers beat the visiting Panthers, 4-1.
Semyon Varlamov made 35 saves, including 13 in the third period. The Flyers’ Brian Elliott stopped 20 shots.
“I think our group has matured a lot over the last two years under [coach Barry] Trotz and that mindset that he brings,” said Matt Martin, who converted a two-on-one, give-and-go with Komarov to make it 2-0 at 11:13 of the first period. “I think that’s why the second period was disappointing for us. We know better.”
Josh Bailey opened the scoring at 7:45 of the first period and Jordan Eberle made it 3-0 at 15:36 of the first.
But the Islanders lost Cizikas at 3:23 of the first period. He had to be helped off the ice without putting weight on his left leg after colliding with Ivan Provorov along the boards and having the defenseman’s skate blade slice into his leg. The Islanders’ fourth line is already missing Cal Clutterbuck, still out indefinitely after his left wrist was slashed by Patrice Bergeron’s skate on Dec. 19 at Boston. Clutterbuck underwent surgery the next day for tendon repair.
Even without Cizikas, the Islanders managed to kill off two Flyers’ power plays in the third period.
But the Flyers scored twice within two minutes, 22 seconds in the second period to cut the Islanders’ lead to 3-2. Travis Konecny used Komarov as a screen to connect from the left circle at 9:34 and defenseman Robert Hagg knocked in the long rebound of Claude Giroux’s shot to pull the Flyers within one at 11:56. Varlamov needed to make a pad save on Michal Raffl’s shorthanded breakaway at 10:18 of the second period to preserve that lead.
“We played a really [bad] second period,” Komarov said. “We should close the game.”
Added Trotz, “We deserved a 3-0 lead and then we just sort of thought it was going to be easy. That’s a good hockey team over there.”
Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.
More Islanders
