In Elmont, the New York Islanders opened their new area on Saturday, and promptly dropped their fifth straight game, 5-2, to the Calgary Flames.
Andrew Mangiapane hit for a pair of power play goals in the Calgary win.
“It was a great atmosphere, it was pretty cool to kind of play in,” Mangiapane said. “You could just feel the energy just as soon as you kind of went out there the first time. Even before warmups, you saw all the fans. It was fun to play in, and I think we just kind of almost fed off that energy.”
Jacob Markstrom made 34 saves in the Flames win.
Brock Nelson scored both Islanders goals.
“I’m really disappointed,” Islanders head coach Barry Trotz said. “You think about the Anders Lee and the Josh Baileys and the Pelechs and the Pulocks and all the guys that are out. … I sent them a little text because they were the ones who put in a lot of the blood, sweat and tears in keeping this team competitive.
“… It was a little bit of a messy 24 hours because of the COVID thing, and we were getting a couple last night, today before the game.”
Calgary improved to 10-3-5.
“I’m playing with good players (Blake Coleman and Mikael Backlund). They’re finding me the puck right now,” Mangiapane said. “I’m just happening to put them home. … I think we played a solid game tonight, and we’re going to need more of that tomorrow.”
Brad Richardson and Mangiapane staked the Flames to a 2-0 lead in the first period before Nelson struck for his first of the game to make it 2-1 after 20 minutes.
“The first 10 minutes, some of the guys were a little bit paralyzed and over-amped up,” Trotz said. “It showed in our first two goals. Those first two goals, we didn’t move our feet, we were just sort of paralyzed.”
Mangiapane and Nelson exchanged goals to make it 3-2 in the third period.
“We just kept rolling lines, trying to keep our centermen low as much as possible,” Flames head coach Darryl Sutter said. ” … It’s a process for our team in terms of learning how to play really hard, physical games, and it shows up.”
New York dropped to 5-7-2.
“Obviously, not the result that we wanted,” Nelson said. “(We wanted) to come out in the home opener and get a win, do it for the fans and all the guys that were missing, all the guys that stepped up to fill some holes.
“A little bit of adversity for us right now, but I thought we played a pretty good game, gave ourselves a chance to win. ‘Varly’ played great and we had some momentum there down one. We just couldn’t get that one to tie it and flip it for us.”
Trevor Lewis and Johnny Gaudreau added late empty-net goals for the 5-2 final.
Semyon Varlamov made 26 saves in the Isles loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.