Road Points

The midterm elections were held yesterday and there was a big shift in power between the Democrats and the Republicans. The GOP had a big night with a number of big wins across the country. It's no coincidence that tonight that the Islanders were also looking for some big wins across the country. The Isles had lost the first two games on this road trip and three straight overall. They needed a little bit of luck to go their way in order to get back on the winning track. Their lucky break turned out to be that Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry did not play due the flu. The question that remained was could they take advantage of the situation.
 
Tonight the Islanders were in Anaheim to play the Ducks. In order to get some offense, Capuano flipped the lines a little bit. Kulemin moved to the top line to play with Tavares and Okposo. I think that is a combination that will stick around for a bit. Grabovski stayed with Nielsen and Lee on the second line. Nelson moved down to the third line to play with Conacher and Clutterbuck. On the fourth line Capuano benched Czikas in favor of Boulton to play with Strome aThe Islanders played a very good first period on the road. New York got on the board first when Tavares notched his fifth goal of the season. It was an easy empty net goal from a bouncing puck.

For most of the the period the Islanders carried the play. They out shot and out hit the Ducks. I was seriously considering going to bed after the first period because it was 11:40 PM and I needed to wake up extremely early to get to the office by 7:00 AM for a conference call. However, the second period was about to start so I decided to sit down to see how long I would last. Before I knew it, Okposo scored to make it 2-0. Things started to look good. But if you are an Islander fan you know that two goal leads are not the safest thing in the world. It was inevitable that the game would eventually be tied.
 
Sure enough almost halfway through the period the Ducks drew a holding penalty from Hickey. The Islanders actually had a pretty good penalty kill going until Hamonic broke his stick right towards the end of the power-play. That enabled the Ducks to score their first goal of the game. That seemed to energize Anaheim as they started flying around Halak looking for a tying goal. Halak was solid denying a number of point blank chances. However, the Ducks tied the game right before the period ended. It was not totally unexpected. 

At this point, it was after midnight and I had to go to bed otherwise I would never be able to get up to get to the office on time. Based on what I saw so far the Isles were playing very well. It would have been a shame if they could not pull this game out in the third period. I went to bed and woke up a few minutes after 5:00 AM. I proceeded with my Twitter review of the previous night's game. As I started to scroll through the feed I saw that the Ducks had actually scored a goal. But after a review in Toronto it was overturned. The Islanders dodged a bullet. The game eventually went into overtime and New York got a much-needed point on the road. A few minutes later the Islanders got a rare power-play in overtime. They made it count. Taveras got his second goal of the game to win it. It tied him with the team lead and goals with Brock Nelson at six.
 
While getting one point on this road trip was a small victory in itself, it was extremely important for the Islander's confidence to get the second point. Now they have a chance to get back to back wins tomorrow night against the Los Angeles Kings. It will be hard to beat the defending Stanley Cup champions on the road on back to back nights. It will not only even their record on this road trip, it will also give them a chance for winning though trip on Saturday night against the Phoenix Coyotes. Winning a couple more games this week will do wonders as far as exercising the November demons of pass seasons. They have the talent now they just need to make sure that they maintain their confidence. Let's see if they can get the SoCal sweep tonight.