Linemates Brock Nelson and Anders Lee will almost certainly finish 1-2 in goal scoring for the Islanders this season. The former could reach 40 goals for the first time while the latter, coming off a devastating knee injury last season, is in reach of 30 goals for a third time.
Neither scored in the Islanders’ wild 5-4 shootout win over the Penguins to open a home-and-home series on Tuesday night at UBS Arena — both Josh Bailey and Zach Parise had two goals — but how Nelson and Lee finish the season will bring some intrigue as the Islanders wind down a season that will almost certainly end in their first playoff miss since 2018.
Ilya Sorokin made a career-high 43 saves and Kyle Palmieri scored the shootout’s lone goal.
The Islanders (34-29-9) are 15 points out of a postseason spot with 10 to play. Any combination of five points either lost by them or gained by the Capitals will eliminate the Islanders.
“Just continue to try and get better and help the team,” said Nelson, who has career-high 33 goals and 19 assists. “Anders, Beau [Anthony Beauvillier] and I had quite the run there last month and produced quite a bit. It’s not always going to come easy like that.”
Lee has 25 goals and 16 assists and a knowledge that he is still able to produce after tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament on March 11, 2021 and missing the Islanders’ second straight run to the NHL semifinals.
“There were moments throughout the season where you feel a certain way, physically,” Lee said. “You get yourself back into the groove and prepare from the six months that was in between surgery and the beginning of the year and seven months before Game 1.
“You don’t feel like you felt before. There’s a lot of stuff naturally that you can’t control with an injury like so there’s times mentally where it’s tough and you’ve just got to grind through it.”
In the end, Nelson said it can’t hurt to have individual goals to strive for over the season’s final weeks.
“You think about it a little bit,” Nelson said. “At the end of the day, it’s about the team.”
Jake Guentzel gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead at 5:52 of the first period as the Islanders were sloppy defensively around their crease. But Parise, lifting a cross-ice feed from Mathew Barzal, tied it at 1 on the power play at 9:10. He then got to the crease to take Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s feed for a short-handed goal at 12:03.
It marked the first time in Parise’s career he’s scored both on the man advantage and penalty kill.
Bailey made it 3-1 with 37.7 seconds left in the first, slapping in a loose puck from the left circle past Casey DeSmith (33 saves).
But Danton Heinen and Guentzel scored in the second period as the Penguins outshot the flatfooted Islanders, 19-7. Bailey regained a 4-3 lead for the Islanders at 2:49 of the third period but Jeff Carter’s power-play deflection of Guentzel’s shot — after a blown tripping call against Beauvillier — tied it again at 5:38.
