Islanders notch frantic win over Hurricanes to enter Christmas break on high note

RALEIGH, N.C. — The two points had been collected in a frenetic 5-4 win over the Hurricanes and the Islanders headed into the three-day Christmas break feeling good. First, though, Cal Clutterbuck wanted to make an educated point.

“We won the game, so that’s the way we wanted it,” he said when asked about the up-and-down nature of the play in Saturday night’s victory at PNC Arena. “It’s chaotic when you play those guys. I really don’t think people understand that their game plan is to just get the puck and throw it at the net. And it just creates chaos.”

Three times the Islanders (16-8-9) — who have earned at least a point in 17 of their last 19 games and took over sole possession of second place in the Metropolitan Division — led by two goals.

“I thought we played hard,” coach Lane Lambert said. “The effort level, the blocked shots throughout the whole game. And that’s a good hockey team over there. I thought it was a full-on war tonight. We have some offense of our own. Do we want to go up and down? Eh, not totally. But we can go up and down.”

Perhaps the biggest difference was in the quality of goaltending.

Ilya Sorokin stopped 36 shots for the Islanders, including sliding to deny Stefan Noesen near the crease with 6.4 seconds left in regulation and the Hurricanes skating six-on-five.

A shaky Pyotr Kochetkov made 23 saves for the Hurricanes (17-13-4), who already had split two overtime games with the Islanders. Kochetkov arguably could have stopped four of the goals he allowed.

“You could tell he wasn’t as good as he’s been,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “That was probably the difference, right?”

“Our goalies give us a chance every single night,” Brock Nelson said. “Sorokin made a couple big saves again tonight and we know we’re going to get that.”

The Hurricanes wasted little time cutting the Islanders’ lead to 4-3 as defenseman Jaccob Slavin connected from the left circle at 1:56 of the third period. But Kochetkov allowed Anders Lee’s shot from low in the right circle to sneak through his pads as the Islanders regained a two-goal lead at 3:44. It was career goal No. 250 for Lee.

Lee, however, took a bad hooking penalty against defenseman Brady Skjei in the neutral zone at 7:48 and Noesen, at the left post, pushed in a power-play goal to cut it to 5-4 at 9:17.

“I thought we did a great job of that,” Lee said of managing emotions in the wild third period. “We stuck with our game. We stuck with what we needed to do. They were coming back and we had some great responses.”

Defenseman Sebastian Aho opened the Islanders’ three-goal first period on a shot from the slot at 11:19 that eluded a scrambling Kochetkov. The goal happened only because defenseman Mike Reilly was not penalized seconds earlier as he dived and swiped his stick to stop Andrei Svechnikov’s potential breakaway.

Teuvo Teravainen knocked in a loose puck in the paint to tie it at 12:22. Nelson regained a one-goal lead from the slot at 14:43 and Mathew Barzal’s cross-ice feed set up Bo Horvat’s one-timer from the right circle to make it 3-1 at 18:25. Kochetkov got a piece of Horvat’s blast with his blocker.

The Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho made it 3-2 with a power-play goal 59 seconds into the second period. Reilly regained the two-goal lead for the Islanders with a blue-line knuckler through traffic that Kochetkov still should have stopped at 14:12 of the second period.

By Andrew Gross

andrew.gross@newsday.comAGrossNewsday

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.