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Saturday night was Frans Nielsen night in Uniondale.
The Islanders forward scored a hat trick all by himself in the third period and allowed the Isles to escape with a wild 7-5 victory over the Stars. With playoff aspirations this season, the Isles must outdo their home record from a season ago, when they finished a miserable 13-9-9.
Midway through the third, Mikhail Grabovski - back from missing three games with a concussion - sprung Nielsen and Nikolay Kulemin on a 2-on-1 break from their own zone. Kulemin fed Nielsen who beat Stars goaltender Anders Lindback with 10:21 to play in regulation. He scored again on a 2-on-1 with Grabovski at 15:09, a goal that proved to be the game-winner once Dallas forward Shawn Horcoff scored 23 seconds later to make it 6-5, making the Isles sweat. But some solid defense in the waning moments kept the Isles in front, before Nielsen completed his hat trick with an empty net goal with just .01 remaining on the clock.
After failing to score in the team's first six games, Nielsen has now scored four goals in the last two.
Anders Lee started the scoring early with a tip-in goal at 5:11 of the first period. Thomas Hickey threw the puck toward the net where the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Lee boxed out a Dallas defender and deflected the puck home for his first goal of the year. Dallas got one back at 13:25 with a rebound goal from Vernon Fiddler. Isles goaltender Chad Johnson appeared to save a wrist shot from Patrick Eaves at first, but the puck deflected into the crease where Fiddler was able to tap it home.
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The Isles continued to cede momentum later in the period with back-to-back penalties by Brian Strait and Hickey. But on the second penalty kill opportunity, Kulemin managed a turnover at the Stars blue line and scored the team's first short-handed goal of the season and his first as an Islander.
Brock Nelson kicked off the second period with a goal at 1:25, which ended a personal four-game slide. A Horcoff penalty at 2:43 gave the Isles a chance to increase their lead to three, but after a terrible power-play effort, the Stars and Tyler Seguin converted on the other end to make it 3-2 at 5:25.
Casey Cizikas managed to give Dallas even more life with a hooking penalty 55 seconds later, which Dallas converted with a power-play goal from Jason Spezza to tie things up. The sloppiness continued at 15:50, when Antoine Roussel outmuscled Lubomir Visnovsky for a rebound goal to put the Isles in their first hole of the night, 4-3. But Visnovsky would make up for it 30 seconds later with a sizzling slap shot past Lindback to make it 4-4, a score that would hold until the second intermission.
Posted by Unknown on Saturday, October 25, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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