PHILADELPHIA — Moral victory, right, boys?
“I don’t know if we really believe in moral victories,” Islanders defenseman Andy MacDonald said after last night’s heartbreaking 4-3 overtime loss to the Eastern Conference-leading Flyers. “We were a point shy of what we wanted and it’s frustrating.”
So after the Flyers’ Andrej Meszaros ripped a wrist shot over Al Montoya’s right shoulder with 18 seconds left in the extra period, Islanders’ interim head coach Jack Capuano explained the difference between being on the bench and being behind it.
“I’m very proud to be the coach of this team right now,” Capuano said. “It’s not frustrating at all. I think the guys will be frustrated a little bit, but to comeback and do what we did shows a lot of guts from these guys.”
After the Flyers scored on a Jeff Carter deflection 5:05 into the third to give them a 3-1 lead, it looked like the Islanders were dead and buried. But the Isles — who have now lost two in a row after starting the month of February 8-3-0 — came storming back, as they’ve been doing all season since Capuano took behind the bench on Nov. 15.
They put a flurry of shots on the Flyers’ young Russian goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky (32 saves), and 86 seconds after the Carter goal, Matt Martin netted just his third of the season on a low wrist shot.
The sellout crowd of 19,776 at the Wells Fargo Center booed, and the Islanders swarmed. With under a minute to go in regulation, Capuano pulled Montoya from his net, and with the extra attacker on the ice and just 27.1 seconds to go, Martin found a loose puck in front and scored his second goal of the period, tying the game at 3-3.
“We knew our season was kind of on the line here, so we did whatever we could to find a way to get a point,” said Martin, whose team has lost 12 consecutive games in Philadelphia, going back to April 7, 2007. “We would have liked two, but that’s how it goes.”
Montoya, who had 39 saves in his fourth straight start, didn’t have much of a chance on Meszaros’ overtime winner, as it got passed a sliding Michael Grabner and found the top-left corner.
“I kind of just saw it at the last second, but it was a great shot,” Montoya said. “This is a tough one to swallow.”
Because of injuries to two veteran defensemen, Milan Jurcina (groin) and Radek Martinek (lower body), the Isles had to call up 21-year-old defenseman Mark Katic from Bridgeport to play his first NHL game.
After going up 1-0 on a first-period goal from Frans Nielsen, Katic was on the ice with his new partner, Bruno Gervais, near the end of the second period when Claude Giroux got one of his two terrific assists. Giroux spun and made a backhanded pass to James van Riemsdyk on the crease, who buried it to tie the game.
“We did a lot of good things,” Capuano said. “There’s a lot of good character, hard-working guys in that room that are going to be good pros.”
