Here is a sentence that was not supposed to be true this season: The Islanders will play with a chance to move into a tie for first place in the Metropolitan Division on Saturday afternoon.
Actually, no, make that: The Islanders will play with a chance to move into a tie for first place in the Eastern Conference on Saturday afternoon against the Lightning.
That was the good news for the home side at UBS Arena on Thursday as the Islanders beat Anaheim 5-2.
The bad news is that they may well do so without their leading scorer after Bo Horvat left the game with an apparent injury to his left leg in the second period and did not return, with the Islanders calling it a lower-body injury.
With the Capitals and Hurricanes playing each other at the same time, the Islanders were guaranteed to be tied for second in both the division and the conference on points — though potentially behind due to games in hand — as long as they won.
That did not come without a brief scare.
Though the Islanders held a 3-0 lead after one period that was whittled down to 3-1 at the second intermission, Troy Terry’s shorthanded goal put Anaheim within one just 2:37 into the third.
Ryan Poehling beat Matthew Schaefer to pick a loose puck off the wall and fed it to Terry, wide open in front of the net, for the shorty.
Simon Holmstrom extended the lead back to two just under four minutes later, getting past Olen Zellweger with a burst of speed on the rush and going forehand-to-backhand to finish past Ville Husso.
Ryan Pulock’s goal from the right point with just over five minutes to go sealed it, as his first goal of the season went off Chris Kreider’s stick and into the roof of the net to make it 5-2.
By the end of the first period, the Islanders held a 3-0 lead from a pair of unlikely sources: Travis Mitchell and their second power-play unit.
Mitchell, the Cornell product signed as an undrafted free agent in 2023 and called up to help replace the injured Alexander Romanov two weeks ago, scored his first NHL point in his seventh game with the Islanders.
After Scott Mayfield’s shot went off the end boards at 8:18 of the first, Mitchell was the first to it and slammed it home for a 1-0 Islanders lead.
Anders Lee added another goal two minutes later, and a third in the final minute of the period. Both came on the power play, both came around the crease, both came off an initial shot from Tony DeAngelo.
Don’t look now, but the second unit has scored in two of the Isles’ last four games and the power play in three of the last four. Given that the Islanders ranked at the bottom of the league at five-on-four as recently as last week, that is a welcome turn of events.
Leo Carlsson’s goal to make it 3-1 — a laser of a wrist shot from the left-hand dot at four-on-four — came minutes before Horvat went off.
The injury to Horvat, however, took the air out of the balloon of what would otherwise have been another confidence-boosting win.
Not only is Horvat the Islanders’ leading scorer with 19 goals, but no one else has more than 10. He is in the midst of his best season on Long Island and has played a huge role in this team’s advancement into a contender.
If it is anything like a long-term injury for Horvat, whose knee appeared to bend oddly on the play, it would be as bad a blow as you could draw up for this team.
If not for that, Thursday may have felt triumphant.
Instead, the win came with an air of solemnity.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
