In all three games this series, the Islanders trailed the Penguins heading into the final 20 minutes. The deficit was two goals this time around, the largest the Islanders had faced.
Despite two mediocre periods, the Islanders kept their heads in it and potted three goals in the final frame, tying the game twice. But Penguins fourth-line winger Brandon Tanev had the last word, batting the puck out of midair with roughly 3 ½ minutes left in regulation to hand the Islanders a 5-4 loss in Game 3 at Nassau Coliseum.
“We’ve had to chase the game, we chased the game all day today,” head coach Barry Trotz said after the loss Thursday night, which put the Isles behind 2-1 in the series. “I thought we played pretty well, we didn’t give them a lot. But anytime we gave them something they ended up scoring.”
Just over a minute after Anthony Beauvillier’s power-play goal knotted the game at 3-3, Penguins forward Jeff Carter answered on the other end with his second tally of the game. The back-and-forth play continued, with Cal Clutterbuck registering his second of the period when the puck bounced in off his body to make it 4-4.
But Tanev swatted in the game-winner at 16:24, and the Islanders couldn’t get it back despite a few chances in the final minutes that were either blocked or saved by Penguins goalie Tristan Jarry.
The Islanders and Penguins get into one of many third-period scuffles in the Isles’ 5-4 Game 3 loss. Getty Images“You got to learn from this, you know, things are gonna happen, and that’s kind of the way playoffs go,” Casey Cizikas said. “We’re gonna to keep building off the way we finished this game and move forward into the next one.”
The pace of the game intensified after Clutterbuck cleaned up a loose puck to make it a one-goal game at 3:46 of the third. The Islanders made a push, which led to a just-jam-it-in sequence on Jarry that the Penguins didn’t appreciate. A brouhaha broke out in the corner, which landed five players from each team in the penalty box.
The Isles emerged with a power play after Jake Guentzel slashed Kyle Palmieri after everybody had been separated. Beauvillier made quick work of the man-advantage, sweeping the puck in past Jarry to make it a 3-3 game.
“It felt like playoff hockey, that’s for sure,” said Scott Mayfield, who scored the Isles’ first goal of the night in the second period. “That’s part of it, those scrums, physical games, it’s good to see. I think that’s what fans want. They want an intense game and I think we gave them that. We just got to find a way to start that right off the bat.”
It was another sluggish start for the Islanders, who struggled to control their passes and repeatedly came out on the wrong end of puck battles. The Penguins were simply faster to the puck, while dominating in the neutral zone for a majority of the night.
Pittsburgh took a 1-0 lead, which came off a Zach Aston-Reese tip for another soft goal let in by Isle goalie Semyon Varlamov to start the game, and turned it into a 3-1 contest on Jason Zucker’s goal with 1.:57 left in the middle frame. Despite Mayfield’s game-tying score at 11:03, the Penguins quickly extinguished any pep the Islanders could’ve had.
“The margin for error, the game can swing real drastically when you’re chasing,” Trotz said. “Even when it’s 2-1 and they get the third goal, now it looks like a pretty, pretty high sort of hill to climb. But we climbed it and then we just didn’t stabilize it enough.”
