Blackhawks 5*, Islanders 4 (*SO): Only 77 Shots, with Nino's Paying Off

But I generally oppose doing back-to-back nights for the goalie, especially on the road. And it wasn’t an easy night tonight. So yeah … tomorrow’s probably DP time.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Reese. It’s him talking to the official site and to Newsday, but under another coach with a different lens down in BPT, it is possible that he’s at the age to make adjustments and make himself more serviceable as a depth guy. They’ve been giving him less PP time apparently, having him work on other things. You never know.

damn I worry that it will hurt the momentum we have right now. We are gelling and having some great periods. we are not putting together as good a complete game as I would like but feel it is coming soon.

That’s better than the NHL video, which doesn’t show the slo-mo replay.

I added the embed above.

be real nice to have a big fat zero in the middle of our record for these road games.

I hope we can buildon the 3rd also, but worry they will get down being they played hard and lost

He deserved one, and that would’ve been too poetic and feel good for December in islanders Country.

What about Jon Sim?

They’ve got Keith and Seabrook and Hjalmarsson – as a trio, comparable to or better than Streit, Hamonic, and AMac (who was out tonight) – and they’re still so shaky on the blueline. Hockey is weird.

What ever they did, they should do it more often. The Blackhawks weren’t the first team this season to waltz into the Islanders zone untouched.

Also, they were so fast in the third which I think, and I may be totally crazy, may mask a lot of their defensive problems. Granted, they’re not always going to get 20-whatever shots in every period, but it would be interesting to see them play more of that. Interesting, and tiring for everyone.

CenterIce runs some of the postgame feeds, but never the Islanders, so thanks to you (and others) for posting notes from them.

That’s great to hear. I’ve wondered about their Xs and Os, so to hear a player talking about that, that sounds like buy-in to me. Good stuff.

but I think there are too many cooks in the kitchen. I’m glad that Scott Allen is back behind the bench… and that means that there are too many toes in the sock.
I gave my perception of the coaching responsibilities in a [long winded] response to Dom a few days ago. This is EXACTLY what I was talking about.
I’d really like to see Doug Weight coaching in sweatpants only… and maybe just stay in his office… because I have a feeling (of course, I may be wrong) the observe/react guys seem to be Allen and Chynoweth. Both of those guys will be head coaches in the NHL while Doug Weight is showing potential sponsors to their luxury suites in a few years.

but “Long Island” – a lot as in “Long Island keeps it in”.

I kind of like that, actually. Some arenas once had “LI” for the Islanders on their out-of-town scoreboards in fact.

KO is like 0 fer lifetime. Grabs I would have to assume would’ve been a bad choice based on his breakaway failures and JT has been pretty poor also (probably 0 fer). The only questionable one in my mind was Moulson and he came the closest. I think Nino has some real shootout skills and Frans has been almost automatic for a couple of years.

PAP was supposed to be good, but really hasn’t done much on the Isles.

Sad to say, but the SO is where we miss Schremp and Tambellini. But alas if they are on the team, we probably get to less shootouts…or more winnable games get to shootouts.

None of them scored then, either.

(You only have three options, and unless you have a Frans or Jokinen your odds aren’t terribly different even in those three.) So I like putting Nino in. He supposedly has done well, has a bag of tricks, and if he can convert early then he becomes another option.

I would say these guys practice this drill way more often than the very limited moments we see three of them take a chance every few weeks, so I rarely think twice about which dice the coaches put out there. They’ve seen way more than we have.

bummer.

I would like to see the team talk about how they should have won it, rather than seemingly being content with playing hard, as was flecked in the post-game interviews. I think that needs to be part of the mindset of this team – accepting nothing less than Ws.

Yeah, but Chicago’s play did not reflect them slowing down at any point. This was a Hawks team that lost 4 of 6 recently and was coming home needing a big win. They were not going to lay a golden egg infront of their crowd. This is a good team, but not an elite team as shown by their record. They are a run and gun as mentioned, and match results by scoring a ton, which they can certainly do. Goaltending and D have been shaky for them.

Not to say our Defense is better, and only recently has our Offense come alive, but our Goalie has been playing extremely well. To not give them credit, for the product we have on the ice, for sticking in there with a team that could easily put up 6 goals a game, would be not to give them their due.

Could we have won the game, yeah, in my eyes we should have.

- Period two we were dominated, yet started off with a PP early and a Rolston Breakaway that could have easily changed the outcome. They played lackadaisical on that PP and made nothing of it, and then proceeded to take penalties and get beat in the neutral zone.

- Give credit to the 3rd period, making the adjustment and sticking in there. Yeah, we could have won the game in there. Its really a few bounces off from winning and the final result.

It was an exciting game though.

Dose, honestly had Moulson’s SO gone in off the post and Toews muffed his first attempt, I would’ve been thrilled to get the second point but I wouldn’t have felt any better about how they played. (This is why the shootout is nothing but a curiosity to me.) I get how cheesy it seems to celebrate progress after a 4-4 (0-1), but I just think that’s the reality of where they are right now. They cannot expect to come out and dominate the Hawks for three periods; they can expect to give them a good run and come back rather than fold. After that second period, I feared a 5-2 folding, not a 4-4 tie.

On Tavares, I would love for him to have more goals, but I wonder, do you think he’s been playing poorly during this run? To me he hasn’t, but I realize I also don’t view him as a “goal scorer” — I view him as a “creator.” Whether that’s goals or assists, he’s a guy who creates danger regularly enough that he and his linemates end up collecting points, as they did last night. So for me it’s not “regardless of what else he does,” because I think that “else” is just as important. Contrast to Moulson or other more “sniper”-type guys where if they aren’t popping in goals, their value isn’t nearly as good.

That’s just how I see it though.

She’s pretty hot for an older woman.

She’s pretty hot for an older woman.

Just like Mottau took over for Bruno.

They did say what you’re saying. You could see how bad they felt, and they weren’t taking the losing okay or saying things like it was okay.

but do you really feel like any NHL players on any team think that the shootout makes thems “winners or losers” on that night? They probably feel the same way the 80s team did about a tie.

Of course the players want to win and this in turns causes them to be that much hungrier. Nobody wants to be second place and when you are so close to winning it makes you try even harder next time. Nobody is doubting that.

As an Islander fan though and watching this season practically finish itself again, what we saw as fans is that they put in a solid effort to come back and try and win this game to only lose in a skills contest that nobody likes anyways. For us taking a point on the road is a good thing for a team that is just finding its stride. Its another step in the right direction.

Matty Mo says it best, ""There’s no letdown, there’s no feeling sorry for ourselves. We came in after the second and we said, ’We’re going to win this game.’ "

The game was there for the taking, it did not happen though. If they play hard they can win, not every night, but more often then not. I think most of us are taking a step back from just lasts night game and looking at the total season. The past week has been much more productive then the whole season, despite our record. I think everyone is happier with the progress and effort and less concerned with the extra point that could have been had. Leave that to the players, who control the situation and their play.

No one likes losing, period. But as fans we need to find the positives, ore we will turn into a very depressed group.

Of course last night was one where Rolston’s point shot was actually on target ;)

I’d rather Hamonic out there, but I don’t know how workable that is when he’s shouldering the load for the rest of the game, too.

Yeah, I didn’t want to read too much into it given the emotion of the situation and the hope attached to him and his grand sample of two NHL goals, but the way he just took that, quickly assessed his options, chose the best of the remaining ones and unleashed a very smart and hard shot gave me a charge.

A lot of our forwards when they’re in the clear take too much time trying to pick their spots and allow the goalie to stay with them, then they fire wide.

i thought there was another defensemen back out of camera view because he didnt seem to be skating hard at all. But nope, thats just Rolston