In Anaheim Friday night, the New York Islanders picked up two goals from Frans Nielsen en route to a 4-1 win over the Ducks.
Brock Nelson and Cal Clutterbuck added goals for the Isles who finally found some offense after a stretch of losses and narrow wins.
“It’s been a little dry by our standards, so for us to come out here and get the offense 
going a little bit, it’s huge bringing us back home,” New York’s Anders Lee said. “I think we all stuck with our program here. It can be frustrating for all of us sometimes when things aren’t going your way. But if you kind of continue to work hard and continue to play your game and not change things, we can get a bunch of them.”
Corey Perry scored a power play goal in the second that knotted the game at the time.
“We stayed with it and I thought we were resilient tonight,” Isles coach Jack Capuano said. “I thought they made a push, but I thought our D really played well tonight. They come really hard on the forecheck, and I thought we were able to exit the zones pretty well tonight on our breakouts. Even when they got that 5-on-3 goal, we kept pushing.”
The loss was the third straight for Anaheim and their game has not improved since getting out of the gate slowly.
“Any time you lose by three in your building, it’s never a fun feeling,” Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler said. “We weren’t even really satisfied with the couple of points we’ve gotten in the last couple of games. It’s a disappointing feeling. Not much to be explained.”
The Ducks cannot talk their way out of this funk and need to make some drastic changes in how they approach each game.
“It’s a mindset,” Ryan Kesler said. “We’ve got to get back to having fun again and it being loose around here. It’s like walking on eggshells around here right now. We’ve just got to get back to having fun and enjoying hockey again.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.