Isles Blown Out, DP Chased In Opener
October 6th, 2006 by murph
Well that went well didn’t it? After all the changes, new players, and talk about this year’s Islanders being different and better than last year, the Isles took the ice for the season opener last night in Phoenix and got run out of the building 6-3. The $67.5 million dollar man was the first to leave – after two periods, 32 shots, 6 goals, and 2 penalties.
The game started off well for the Islanders, just 1:45 into the game Trent Hunter threw a long pass from the point to a streaking Miroslav Satan on the right side. The pass was almost broken up by the Coyotes’ defense, but it had enough on it to make it all the way to Satan. Satan did a great job adjusting to the pass and then roofed it over Cujo for a 1-0 Islanders lead.
It was all downhill from there as a steady stream of Islanders to and from the penalty box doomed the team. Five penalties in the first resulted in the Islanders being outshot 15-4 in the period and down 2-1. Things got worse in the second period when the Coyotes scored 4 goals (1 PP) within a 5 minute span. Four more Islander penalties during the period kept the team from gaining any momentum. DiPietro took his second penalty of the game late in the second period, and was replaced by Mike Dunham in the third. Dunham stopped 12 of 12 shots in relief. The Islanders ended up taking 11 penalties last night, giving up 2 PP goals and were outshot 44-29 in the game.
Here’s the official spin press release from NewYorkIslanders.com. “Made it respectable”? What a joke, who wrote this crap? Charles Wang himself?
The Islanders may not have won tonight’s game, but they did win the third period. The Islanders fell behind 6-1 after two periods, but made it respectable after Viktor Kozlov, playing in his first game as an Islander, scored two goals to make the final score 6-3 in the team’s season opener Thursday night at the Glendale Arena in Phoenix, Arizona.
[Update 1] Well Wang and the Isles’ PR team might be satisfied with “respectable”, but it’s obvious Coach Nolan is not. From NewYorkIslanders.com Coach Nolan’s thoughts on last night’s game.
We competed too late
You’re not going to win in this league when you miss assignments and don’t battle for loose pucks. We didn’t compete until the third period and that’s not good enough. Not even close. We had a couple of bad breaks, goals that went off defensemen’s skates. But those are also the kids of breaks winning teams earn. I took Ricky out after the second period to keep him fresh for the rest of the trip, shake things up a bit and give Mike Dunham work. Rick will be back on. I’m not worried about him. I thought Dunham did a good job in a tough spot. We have a practice here in Arizona tomorrow afternoon and plenty of time to work on things.
