In Ottawa, Drake Batherson. scored the first of his double for the Senators early in the first period for a 1-0 lead over the visiting New York Islanders on Friday night.
The Islanders replied with four straight goals in a 5-3 win.
Semyon Varlamov made 28 saves in the win.
“When we weren’t winning, I said we were playing good,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “We felt as though the wins would start coming if we continued to play well. The challenge was not to get discouraged, and I thought our guys did a great job of that and they played hard every game. And I thought tonight was no exception.”
The Islanders moved to 8-6-5 off their third straight win.
Kyle Palmieri scored at 13:55 of the first to tie the game, 1-1.
Oliver Wahlstrom hit for a goal at 6:22 of the first to give the Isles a 2-1 lead.
“We had to step up and eat some minutes,” said New York’s Ryan Pulock, who had 28:47 of ice time. “I think our forwards did a really good job for us of playing simple and trying not to turn any pucks over in the neutral zone, and trying to get everything deep. Kudos to everyone for stepping up and making it a little easier on us on the back end with being down a couple of bodies.”
In the middle frame, Mathew Barzal (power play) and Anders Lee scored six apart starting at 9:51 to extend the Isles lead to 4-1.
Ottawa got one back to make it 4-2 on a strike by Tim Stutzle midway through the second.
“I was 100 percent confident we were going to win that game,” Stutzle said. “There was never a doubt in my mind. Even when they scored [to make it] 5-3, I thought we were going to win, for sure. We had some good looks. Give credit to their goalie, he made some huge saves, especially during the 6-on-5.”
Batherson hit for his double at 11:43 to cut the deficit to 4-3 for the Senators.
“You have to forecheck, you have to take the walls away,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said of playing against a team that is down two defensemen. “We did it for a stretch in the second period, but not enough. And when we made mistakes, it ended up in the net. They’ve got some older guys that in the third period just stayed back and we didn’t create enough by creating chaos, shooting pucks, getting them back. We just didn’t make it hard enough on them defensively.”
Noah Dobson scored 5:18 of the third to make the final score, 5-3 to the Islanders.
“It happens with guys going down, but two [defensemen] right away was pretty significant,” Lee said. “So, a huge, gutsy effort from those four back there, and we tried to do our best and talked as much as we could all night.”
Anton Forsberg made 21 saves in the loss.
“When they scored the 3-1 goal, it felt like we got behind, obviously,” Forsberg said. “And then I let in the fourth one there. I should’ve had that one. It’s uphill from there. I’ve got to find more consistency and get a few saves there. The team battled back hard. We had a [bad] bounce in the third. We’ve just got to keep working.”
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