Jordan Martinook scored after more than two months and it broke the tie in the third period as the Carolina Hurricanes beat the New York Islanders 2-1 on Sunday night. Jesperi Kotkaniemi also scored and Frederik Andersen saved 21 shots for the Hurricanes. With their recent wins, they are still at first place in the Metropolitan Division even after losing four out of five games.
Martinook said he was having difficulty scoring goals in his last 24 games. Pageau scored first for the Islanders who have lost two games back-to-back and three out of the last five. New York is still in a strong spot to make it to playoffs, but they only have four more games left and there are other teams competing hard for the final two spots in the Eastern Conference. Pageau commented that their effort was good and that they were close to winning.
Ilya Sorokin made 33 huge saves for the New York. However, Carolina outshot them, which only happened two times in their last nine games.
Even though they already qualified for playoffs, the Hurricanes are still trying their best to stay ahead of New Jersey in the division rank. Coach Rod Brind’Amour mentioned that “we have a job to do and we want to finish as high as we can”. He was also proud of his team’s performance because it looks like they were more desperate than the Islanders who need to win this game badly.
Michael Andersen won his 20th game out of the last four, giving him a 1-2-1 record. Jordan Martinook made Carolina take the lead by passing the puck from Jaccob Slavin before skating in from the blue line and shooting for his 12th goal of the season – it was his first goal since February 1st. Coach Brind’Amour said that Jordan has been unlucky and deserves to score a great goal like that.
Pageau scored for the first time in 7 games, which was his 3rd goal since coming back from an absence of 12 games. It was his 13th goal this season and happened with 2:27 left of the first period.
Kotkaniemi attempted to counter this by scoring at 9:27 in the second period – ending a 9-game streak without goals, making it his 15th goal of the season.
Sorokin played two days in a row for the first time since December 16th and 17th. The Islanders just finished playing their last game on consecutive days, but it didn’t go so well as Sorokin was pulled from Saturday’s match after allowing four goals. During this game against the Hurricanes, they had fewer shots than them at 28-14 by halftime. However, Coach Lane Lambert said that “we were one shot away” from winning.
The Carolina team has used different goalies for each of its last three victories. Antti Raanta got a shutout win on Saturday night at Montreal, and Pyotr Kochetkov was sent to the minors after winning against Toronto on March 25th. Andersen, who has been able to win 20 games in nine seasons, said that all three goalies are really different from each other yet they like helping and learning from one another.
Jesse Puljujarvi just got his first point while playing for Carolina in 11 games since he joined them from Edmonton. He helped with a goal by Kotkaniemi. Alexander Romanov from the Islanders was away from the game for only the second time this season and the last time he missed one was on February 7th. Teuvo Teravainen from the Hurricanes has been sick and not playing for 3 straight games now.
The Islanders will be facing off against Tampa Bay later on Thursday night, and the Hurricanes will have to compete against Ottawa Tuesday night..
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