On Long Island, John Gibson made 28 saves to help the Anaheim Ducks defeat the New York Islanders, 6-5, after the skills portion of the afternoon;s events on Saturday.
“You can walk out of here and lose by a goal or lose by three and have all kinds of great excuses,” Anaheim coach Dallas Eakins said. “Our captain was sick, we’ve got a couple guys hurt, we’ve got a bunch of other guys hacking up a lung in there too. It would have been real easy to do that.
Jakob Silfverberg #33 had a goal in regulation and skills competition – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“But I’ll keep saying the one thing we do have for sure. We might not be there from an experience point, and we’re certainly not one of the best teams in the League right now, but we do have really high character in there. I think they really showed that today and I think they should be very proud of the performance they put on here.”
Mathew Barzal, Anders Lee, Nick Leddy, Ryan Pulock, and Brock Nelson scored for the Isles.
“We’re in the winning business, not the points business,” Isles head coach Barry Trotz said.
Adam Henrique, Cam Fowler, Jakob Silfverberg, Sam Carrick, and Max Comtois scored in regulation for the Ducks.
“They’re known as a stingy team, and that’s what we try to be as well,” Fowler said. “You didn’t expect both teams to put up five [goals], but sometimes there’s going to be games like that, and we have to find ways to stay in hockey games and win in a variety of different ways. We were able to do that tonight.”
Comtois and Silfverberg potted goals in the skills competition.
[WATCH: All Ducks vs. Islanders highlights]
Semyon Varlamov made 23 saves in the loss.
“I just think maybe we’ve got to be a little harder, a little stronger and a little quicker in our decisions,” Lee said. “I think we were just a little, at times tonight, just like a half-step slow, whether that was picking up a guy’s stick or clearing the puck, and that goes in the net. Just one of those bear-down moments type of things. We’ll figure it out.”
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