Anders Lee has made a career of potting goals around the net, but this one wasn’t your typical deflection score or rebound stuffer.
The Islanders captain lowered his shoulder coming down the right wall and swooped around a defenseman on his backhand, before shifting to his forehand and burying the game-winning goal past Sergei Bobrovsky to lift the Isles to their latest comeback victory, 5-4 Sunday night over the Panthers at UBS Arena.
“It’s awesome, it’s fun, it’s why we play the game,” the 35-year-old Lee said after scoring his 14th of the season. “It was one of those nights the pucks were tough and there wasn’t a lot out there, especially early, and creating wasn’t easy to come by.
“So it felt like we earned it.”
Lee has scored in each of the past three games following a 10-game goal drought.
Veteran winger Jonathan Drouin did not play due to what coach Patrick Roy said was a lower-body injury suffered late in Saturday’s overtime win in Columbus.
Anthony Duclair, a healthy scratch multiple times on either side of the Olympic break, replaced Drouin on the left side of a line with Cal Ritchie and Emil Heineman.
Backup goalie David Rittich was shaky early, but he finished with 29 saves on 33 shots to earn the victory. … Defenseman Ryan Pulock left the bench for the locker room early in the third period, but he returned to the ice shortly thereafter.
After playing their first two games out of the break on the road, the Isles honored the Olympic participants on both teams, including forwards Bo Horvat (Canada) and Ondrej Palat (Czechia).
Florida forward Matthew Tkachuk of Team USA received a huge ovation, as did the mentions of the American men’s and women’s gold medal-winning squads as a whole.
Longtime Isles PR head Kimber Auerbach, who served in that role for Team USA, also was recognized.
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