We’ll put it all on Strait for failing to do his job in the crease with only a little more than two minutes left of the third when the Isles were leading by one goal. If that is too rough, okay. But it looked all too familiar.
Jack Capuano was happy with the effort of his team. When The Maven asked him “What went wrong?” Jack smiled, “I thought we played a good game. We won the face-offs. Miller made some big saves not only in the 3rd but in OT. The thing is in the details that wee discussed this week. Our guys executed well. It’s just one of those things. We had the right match-ups there. Got pounded a little bit harder up the wall.”
Capuano had insisted his team shoot more after two games with exceptionally low shot totals. They responded by throwing a total of 44 shots at Ryan Miller, who still is -- A GOOD GOALIE.
When it comes to face-offs, Casey Cizikas won eight of ten of his face-offs and also had one assist point last night.
Jack had switched up his lines a little, separating Matt Moulson and John Tavares. However, one of the Isles goals attributed to Moulson was because John Tavares banked a puck off Moulson’s leg and passed Miller. It doesn’t matter if the puck banks off your butt, you take the goal.
“The line changes were pretty good.” Jack continued. “It was a good game for us. You can’t fault the work ethic tonight. They played hard tonight.” .
When Jack was asked about PM Bouchard, he said he “competed, he did a lot of good things with the puck and away from the puck, I liked the way he played tonight.” He had one assist, three shots and two giveaways in his 19;10 of total ice time.
Capuano smirked a little when asked about the icing calls that had been made knowing the question was leading. The amount of “discretion” is involved in these hybrid icing calls is maddening.
“From the bench, they looked pretty much even. It’s their discretion. It’s for their safety. A lot of study went into this.” A lot of training should still go into it.
Cal Clutterbuck is getting back to his old, annoying self -- which is a good thing. He did what he does which is agitate the other team while trying to stay out of the box. “Our discipline was there, but we played physical. They played a good hockey game in all aspects of the game. We’ll take the point at home and move on to Thursday night. If we could play similar to how we just played, I’ll be happy. We have to play fast. I was pleased.”
From the comments that were flying from fans last night, Jack was the only one who was. Kyle Okposo made some blind passes that ended up going the other way. He took a boarding call that had him sitting for four minutes, which could have been worse. However, he did jump in to protect John Tavares from Steve Ott. Tavares and Ott had it out for each other the entire game. Personally, I don’t think Tavares was very innocent in the final altercation. However, he escaped a penalty.
Matt Martin scored his first goal of the season and laid four hits. But to see him with Stan Fischler, you would have thought he just lost his best friend. “You had them on the ropes, what happened?” Stan asked. “ We didn’t capitalize on a few of our chances in the third. It’s a tough way to lose. We had a lot of opportunities to put them away and we didn’t. It’s always good to pick up points, every point is huge. These are the kinds of games you can’t lose. My first few years here we would lose this way….”
EXACTLY!! It was history repeating itself! Unless you’d like to call it Nabokov doing a RDP impression. Every game you’d hold your breath for the last two minutes of the game waiting for the fall.
Cal Clutterbuck wasn‘t as happy as Capuano either. “We had a lot of chances on offense, but failed to convert and let a fragile team hang around to the point where you saw what happened. We need a killer instinct. It’s one of those things that you learn as the year goes on, you do it once, you do it twice, it snowballs. We’ll learn.”
Let’s hope so.
Other things from last night: How many times did we have to hear the name “Foligno”? He was everywhere. While no one wants to hear me say “No streak lasts forever,” it doesn’t. It was only a matter of time before Buffalo won a game. Since when is Matt Moulson becoming Mr. Shoot-out? All Hail. Eric Boulton played 3:59 last night. Michael Grabner had 8 shots last night, but he still has to learn to finish. Josh Bailey had 5 shots and added one assist point to his score sheet, which doesn’t tell the entire story of how well he is playing.
New York Islanders Blogger • 
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