New York Islanders: Three takeaways from Game 1 victory over the Penguins

ResiLIent

The New York Islanders are a team with a massive chip on their shoulders. They played every darn minute of that hockey game like they had a massive chip on their shoulders. For all the doubters and nay sayers out there, is another spark that should be lit under the Isles. But the players are the only ones who play the games and they were sparked by other doubts during game one.

In the early minutes, Tom Kuhnhackl had a goal taken away from him after an offsides review took away the goal called on the ice. The Isles thought they were up 1-0 before we even knew it, it was taken away.

There was another instance in the game, again with Kuhnhackl, where the Isles would have had a big goal, but he had so much momentum that he hit the goalie and there was no goal. Now, I am not saying any of these were the incorrect call by the refs, I am just noting that the Isles had these moments taken away from them.

There were multiple times when the Isles has the rug pulled out from under them. Anders Lee was called for boarding. It was a terrible call considering the circumstances. The Islanders ended up killing that penalty, but again, the carpet was pulled out from under them, they lost all the momentum and had to deal with a hostile crowd, it ended up sparking them.

This isn’t to mention how many times the Isles blew the lead, I did get into that earlier in this piece but almost having the game won so many times had to impact them mentally, it didn’t show.

Every thing the Isles did in Game 1 was marred by some kind of controversy. They had to do basically everything they did, but twice. They had to score the opening goal twice, score the game winning goal twice, overcome bad penalty calls, and be victim to some no calls.

No matter what, they overcame it all. They were sparked by those “almost” moments and turned them into defining moments from their win.