On Long Island, the New York Islanders stretched their win streak to eight games with a 5-2 win over the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night.
Five different skaters had strikes for the Islanders.
“I think we frustrated them by playing a 200-foot game,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “We made them go through us. We were like, ‘We’re going to stay on top of you, we’re going to play our game, not play your game. You’re better at your game then we are, so force you into our game if we can.’ We’re comfortable there.”
Thomas Greiss made 33 saves to get the win.
Yanni Gourde and Ryan McDonagh scored for the Lightning.
“Eventually we’re going to get rewarded and then hopefully we can go on a little bit of a streak here,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “We are seeing improvement in a lot of areas, so we’ve just got to weather through this. We knew this was coming. … But we’re still above .500 heading into Sweden and hopefully we can come back with some more points and then dig our heels in once our schedule evens out.”
Anders Lee, Mathew Barzal, Derick Brassard, Ryan Pulock, and Josh Bailey scored for the Isles.
“We’ve all recognized what our identity is and who we are, and guys playing their roles perfectly,” Lee said. “We’re not trying to do too much. I think we’re playing a pretty simple game, not taking too many risks. If we do, we have had great goaltending that has backed us up.”
[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Islanders highlights]
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 21 saves for Tampa Bay who dropped to 6-5-2 and might bethinking of some desperation per Kevin Shattenkirk’s reference to teams having nothing to lose.
“The guys are working, they’re trying, and I think that’s when frustration sets in when you are working so hard and quote-unquote breaks aren’t going your way,” Cooper said. “But we threw 35 [shots] at him tonight. Probably in the end, the scoring chances are going to be very similar. I don’t think there were very many either way. We keep having defensive efforts like that eventually with the skillset we have up front, we will score some goals.”