Isles 2
Panthers 1
It was a night of impressive accomplishments for the Islanders. Not only did they win a regular-season game on their home ice for the first time since March 1, but the Isles also scored a pair of power- play goals – two feats that at one time or another seemed like impossible pipe dreams for this team.
Following a pre-game ceremony that had a distinct IslesNets flavor – Julius Erving and Denis Potvin dropped the ceremonial first puck for the home opener in front of a sellout crowd – the Islanders clawed out a 2-1 win against the Panthers.
“They just kept working at it,” Steve Stirling said.
It was indeed another one of those patented home starts for the Isles, who gave up a goal 53 seconds into the second period when Viktor Kozlov undressed their entire defense for a wraparound goal. But there would be no shoulders slumping as the Isles only seemed to rev their engines that much harder and took advantage of some unraveling discipline by their opponents.
For the night, the Isles went 2-for-7 on the power play, zipping the puck around the zone and finally getting people not named Mark Parrish to crash the net.
Mariusz Czerkawski scored two points on the power play in his Coliseum homecoming and Rick DiPietro made 20 saves to earn the victory against an unconscious Roberto Luongo, who stopped 44 shots. The two have swapped the label of being the Islanders’ franchise goaltender, but it seems more and more like Isles GM Mike Milbury made the right call on that infamous transaction, no?
It sure looked that way when DiPietro stoned Mike Van Ryn with less than a minute to go to preserve the win.
“That was big,” DiPietro said.
Even bigger than the save was the fact that the home team came back from a 1-0 deficit, made the most of their power-play chances and got the crowd going, rather than waiting for the patrons to fire them up.
Oleg Kvasha got the game-winner when Adrian Aucoin threw a ridiculous pass against the grain that went cross-cage for the easy tap-in at 4:10 of the third.
* Dave Scatchard went off at 2:40 of the third with a right shoulder injury after falling awkwardly when Pavel Trnka clipped him in the neutral zone . . . Michael Peca, playing in his first Islanders home opener (he was injured the last two years) was the first to go after Olli Jokinen when the former Islander butterball boarded Shawn Bates . . . The Lucky 7’s reunited for this one as Bates replaced Jason Blake on Peca’s left . . . The Isles flirted with firing the most shots in a game since they poured 50 on Pittsburgh in 1997, but came up short because they had so many blocked by a fearless defense.