In Sunrise, Monday night, the Florida Panthers’ Denis Malgin scored early in the period to get the Panthers even with the New York Islanders at 4-4.
But the Isles’ Mathew Barzal had the only goal in the skills competition to give them a 5-4 win.
“Honestly, I didn’t even have a move coming into it,” Barzal said. “I just was trying to read off him and got in tight there. It’s kind of a move I’ve done for a while and went to my backhand.”
The Panthers lost the game and also lost Roberto Luongo to an injury in the middle frame.
“Your first thought is you hope he’s going to get up and it’s just a minor tweak, but that wasn’t the case,” James Reimer said. “It’s never fun when you see your partner go down with that. We’re hoping for the best for him, but at the same point you’re just trying to get yourself into the game and ready to go. It’s too bad and I hope he’ll be all right.”
Anders Lee, Thomas Hickey, Brock Nelson and John Tavares scored in regulation for the Islanders.
Jaroslav Halak. made 39 saves to get the win for New York.
Vincent Trocheck, Aleksander Barko and Keith Yandle also scored for the Panthers.
“I thought we took the pace to them the majority of the game. Obviously with (Luongo) going out, there was obviously a drop in our game and we kind of hung (Reimer) out to dry a little bit. But after we got our focus back and got back to work, I thought we did a good job for the majority of the game,” Yandle said after the loss.
[WATCH: All Islanders vs. Panthers highlights]
Reimer made 19 saves in relief of Luongo and took the loss.
“It’s tough,” Trocheck said. “Our No. 1 goalie has been outstanding for us the last four, five years, so it’s obviously tough whenever he goes down. And to see him in so much pain, it kind of gave us a little boost almost after that just to try to kind of win it for him.”
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