No. 1 beat No. 2 and the Islanders got win No. 3.
And it wasn’t just two points for Matthew Schaefer’s Islanders over Michael Misa’s Sharks in this 4-3 Isles victory on Tuesday night at UBS Arena which brought them to NHL-.500 at 3-3-0.
It was, and not for the first time in a season just a couple of weeks old, a night in which Schaefer seemed to transcend everything else, in which he got an assist and a goal, in which the crowd chanted his name, in which the Islanders could feel completely secure that whatever comes from the next 76 games, they have a superstar in the making.
“I mean, look at what he’s doing,” captain Anders Lee said. “… We have the channels on in the room, so I get to see what’s on the bottom ticker. It’s pretty incredible. But it feels within the room that it’s just who he is. I think he’s kinda had his game from the get-go. So the last month and a half, it’s surprising, but it’s not.”
In recording his first point of the night, a secondary assist on Bo Horvat’s first-period power-play goal, Schaefer extended his points streak to six games, tying Marek Zidlicky’s record for defensemen starting a career and putting him one short of Alexandre Daigle’s expansion-era record for players 18 years old or younger.
The other two 18-year-olds who had a six-game point streak are named Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky.
In recording his second point of the night, a second-period goal that prompted the chants to pick up around the UBS stands, Schaefer moved into a tie for the NHL’s scoring lead among defensemen and became the youngest defenseman in history to score a game-winning goal.
It has rarely been more obvious that the sky is the limit, and Schaefer looks on pace to reach it in record time.
“It’ll bring a lot of fans to the games,” coach Patrick Roy said, after calling it Schaefer’s best game so far. “I know that eventually, Matthew will bring a lot of people into this building. I have no doubt in my mind.”
On nights like these, everything else seems secondary to the rookie, but the Islanders, three-game win streak or not, are wading into dangerous territory with their play.
For chunks of Tuesday’s game, as has been the case often this season, the Islanders played a confused and discombobulated game in their own zone.
They lost puck battles. They were wide-open defensively and defended the rush poorly.
It’s hard to believe this can be a winning formula for long. The Islanders, though, are more equipped to punch back than in the past, and punch back they did on Tuesday.
After a sloppy first period in which a pair of power-play goals let them overcome a messy 20 minutes, the Isles took a 4-2 lead into the third after Schaefer put in Anthony Duclair’s feed from behind the net at 6:38 of the second.
They did not make it easy on themselves from there.
The Islanders came out lax and willing to absorb pressure in the third period, with San Jose only too happy to oblige. Macklin Celebrini scored off Dmitry Orlov’s feed to the slot at 10:16 of the period to make it a 4-3 game, and Scott Mayfield took a tripping penalty just 25 seconds later.
The Islanders, however, killed off the penalty, and with Ilya Sorokin playing his best game of the season in recording 33 saves, they rode out the threat from there.
“He really saved us out there tonight with the big saves,” Schaefer said. “We want to help him as much as we can, but we know he’s right there behind us, helping us.”
It would be best for the Islanders, of course, to depend on that help as little as possible.
“I think we were turning the puck over,” Lee said. “We fed them that, so when you turn the puck over, it’s easy for them to come the other way. I thought we had more of those tonight than we want.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
