On Long Island, Monday, Anders Lee broke a scoreless tie with a goal in the seventh minute of the third period to give the Isles a 1-0 lead over the visiting Colorado Avalanche.
That goal stood up as the only strike of the game in the win for New York.
Anders Lee scored the game’s only goal early in the third period – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Semyon Varlamov made 32 saves to make sure the goal stood as the winner, 12 of those saves came in the third period.
“Of course I’m excited to meet my previous team,” said Varlamov, whose shutout was his second this season. “I played for them for a long time, for eight years. Of course this one is a special one.
“It was really weird, I’m not going to lie. It was very weird. But I guess I just tried to stay focused on my own things. I just tried to do my own job. I’m glad we won.”
Leee was pleased to get the one that made the difference.
“You want to get one for the boys,” Lee said. “We’ve all been gripping it a little tight lately. We’re in a 0-0 hockey game in the third period in our building and it was just a good opportunity to win a game. Just to get one, I think it was a relief for everyone really.”
The Avs dropped to 25-14-4.
“That’s the staple of their game, real committed defensively, real good in almost all defensive aspects of the game,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “That was the type of game we were expecting.
“We had some chances to capitalize and we didn’t. I thought [Varlamov] was really good in their net, [Francouz] was good in our net. They controlled the play in the first. We controlled the play in the second. It’s tough to create scoring chances and when you had them, you just needed someone to capitalize on one. They did it once and we weren’t able to.”
[WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Islanders highlights]
Pavel Francouz made 32 saves in the loss.
“I think we had our chances, we just didn’t get bounces and one that just didn’t go in for us,” Ryan Graves said. “It was a tight game. We played a really good game, I thought. We’ve just got to look at the positives.”
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