Impressive third periods by the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders on Saturday and Sunday ensured they’d each still remain on the fringes of the Eastern Conference wildcard race for at least another game.
On Tuesday night, the Penguins and Islanders will try to damage the other’s long-shot hopes when Pittsburgh hosts New York in a battle of longtime Metropolitan Division rivals.
The Penguins have been off since Saturday, when they fended off a comeback attempt by the visiting New Jersey Devils and scored three unanswered goals in the final six minutes of the third period to close out a 7-3 win. The host Islanders overcame a two-goal third-period deficit Sunday night and stunned the Florida Panthers, 4-2.
The win Saturday was the fourth straight for the Penguins (28-31-10, 66 points), who have outscored their opponents 18-9 over that stretch while tying their season-long winning streak set from Nov. 27-Dec. 3. Pittsburgh also briefly moved into a tie with the Islanders for sixth place in the Metropolitan Division, though New York snapped that deadlock Sunday.
But the Penguins still remain six points behind the New York Rangers in the race for the second wild card spot by virtue of the Rangers’ 3-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers. Pittsburgh has 13 games left, the fewest in the NHL as of the start of the week.
“Everybody is well aware of where we’re at,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said after Erik Karlsson, Connor Dewar and Kevin Hayes scored Pittsburgh’s final three goals Saturday. “Anything can happen. You don’t know where it goes with this game. We’re just trying to keep our head down, keep our eye on the game right in front of us. We’re going to try to put our best game on the ice and see what happens.”
The Islanders (30-28-8, 68 points) offered some more proof of the often-surprising nature of the NHL when they upset the Panthers — the defending Stanley Cup champions — by mounting a two-goal third-period comeback for just the second time this season. New York also edged the Penguins 4-3 in a shootout on Nov. 5.
The Islanders appeared headed for another frustrating defeat and a further dimming of their postseason aspirations when they outshot the Panthers 22-10 in the first two periods yet trailed 2-0.
But Marc Gatcomb, Maxim Tsyplakov and Noah Dobson scored within a span of 6:04 in the third for the Islanders, who withstood a pair of 6-on-5 flurries by the Panthers before Simon Holmstrom scored an empty-netter with 6.3 seconds left.
The win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Islanders, who had a pair of power-play goals overturned in a 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on March 11 before they fell to the Oilers 2-1 in overtime on Friday.
“We didn’t necessarily get the results in Los Angeles or against Edmonton, but we got them (Sunday),” Islanders captain Anders Lee said. “It’s good to get some juice from this one.”
