In Newark, the visiting New York Islanders hung a 6-4 loss on the Devils on Friday night.
“I liked the way we played for the most part,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “We played eight minutes of 5-on-6 and just didn’t find a way to put it in and finish the game. Other than that, I thought we did a lot of really good things.”
Brock Nelson hit for a double in the Isles win.
“It’s a big win,” Nelson said. “We kind of felt like we wanted to come out and play a strong game.”
Semyon Varlamov made 25 saves in the Islanders win.
New York improved to 17-11-0.
New Jersey took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a power play goal from Nico Hischier.
“To their credit, they came out and battled hard,” Hischier said. “They were chipping pucks in all night, and that’s easy hockey. It can be effective, and they waited for us to make some mistakes and buried those. We need to clean up some things. If you give up six goals, you’re not going to win a hockey game.”
The Islanders scored five of the next six goals in the game to take a 5-2 lead in into the third period.
Nelson and Anders Lee replied in the first period to give the Isles a 2-1 lead.
“I’m feeling good, just trying to get out there and impact both sides, offensively for sure,” Nelson said. “We’re trying to take advantage of some more shots and more opportunities 5-on-5 to generate as a line. I felt we did a pretty good job of that.”
In the middle frame, New York scored twice in 34 seconds to push the lead to 4-1, Casey Cizikas and Oliver Wahlstrom were the strikers.
Dawson Mercer stopped the Isles run when he scored in the second to get the deficit back to two, 4-2.
New Jersey dropped to 21-5-1.\”It’s definitely not on him,” Hischier said. “We didn’t help him enough tonight, and I think it was just more for a momentum change to get something going with the team.”
Nelson answered with his second of the night off the power play, for the 5-2 score after two periods.
In the third, Cal Clutterbuck made it 6-2 for the Islanders.
New Jersey tried to rally in the short time left, they picked up two goals when Tomas Tatar and Jack Hughes hit for markers for the 6-4 final.
“I don’t think it was the game we were hoping for or expected of ourselves,” New Jersey defenseman Ryan Graves said. “Just not the start we’re looking for, and overall, we managed the puck poorly and gave up a lot of chances. We didn’t create energy the way we should.”
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Vitek Vanecek got the start for New Jersey and made 13 saves, yielding four goals before getting the hook.
Akira Schmid made 13 saves in a mop up role.
“You got to throw everything you have up front, and that’s what we did and we got one, but needed two more,” Hischier said. “In the end, we lost the hockey game. Now we get some rest and move forward.”
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