PHILADELPHIA – Bo Horvat made his debut for the New York Islanders on Monday night, in a 23-1 win over the Flyers.
Horvat iced nearly 20 minutes for the Isles.
“I’m not going to lie, I was really nervous tonight,” Horvat said. “The guys made me feel really comfortable. They were great. Obviously, it feels even better to get that win and get my legs under me.”
Semyon Varlamov made 25 saves in the New York win.
“I thought it was an important game for us, get a ‘W’ right off the (All-Star) break,” Varlamov said. “We didn’t play for a week, so I thought we did a lot of good things today, especially in the first period. Overall, I’m very happy with what we’ve done today.”
The Islanders improved to 26-22-5.
“We knew what type of matchup it was,” Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk said. “Obviously, I think the start of the game wasn’t what we needed, but I think we did some good things as the game went along. Obviously, came up short. Not good enough.”
Kyle Palmieri scored off the power play in the first period to give the Islanders a 1-0 lead.
“It was men against boys in the first period,” Philadelphia coach John Tortorella said. “Played better in the second. We had a lot of almost chances. I thought we were a little sloppy offensively. … Just a lot of almost offensively.
“We’re going to find out about some people, when we play some games here, in the checking department. Teams are going to ramp that up. It’s going to be really interesting to see how guys react.”
Mathew Barzal pushed the New York lead to 2-0 in the second period.
“We’re right there. The win tonight really helped,” Barzal said. “We’re just excited to try to make a push. We want to be in the playoffs, so that’s really the mindset now. Just every game is a playoff game.”
The Flyers cut it to 2+1 at 10:39 of the middle frame on a marker from Nicolas Deslauriers
Philadelphia dropped to 21-22-9.
“I thought we had good opportunities when it was 2-0 to make it 3-0, and we didn’t capitalize on it,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “Then they scored one. At the end of the day, it’s the scoreboard that counts, and I thought we did a really good job of defending, especially toward the end.”
Carter Hart made 28 saves in the Flyers loss.
“We’ve played them a lot over the years here,” Hart said. “They’ve got a lot of returning guys from over the years. They play a hard game. They play to their system really well, and that works for them, but tight game tonight.”
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