NEW YORK _ This was a weird one.
The Islanders will gladly take the two points after Sunday's 6-4 win over the Avalanche, a game marked by a franchise rookie-record five assists from Mathew Barzal and a raft of goals that banked in off defensive players.
Colorado came in having played a night earlier and the Avs were headed out to Sweden immediately after Sunday's game to prepare for their two-game series with the Senators. Oh, and the Avs also traded Matt Duchene to those same Senators mid-game, with Duchene leaving the ice less than 10 minutes in after being informed of the deal.
The trade is the end of a long road for Duchene, in whom the Islanders also had strong interest.
With all that, the Islanders should have dominated. Instead, they grabbed a 6-2 lead on a lot of luck and some good work by Thomas Greiss in net, even with a couple of goals allowed in the final 30 seconds to account for the tight-looking final score.
"I'm in awe of that game, really," a dour-looking Doug Weight said after his team improved to 5-0-1 at Barclays Center and won for the sixth time in the last eight. "We got some breaks. ... You're going to have sloppy games so you can't overreact. But we have some guys just going through the motions and it's becoming a pattern."
The breaks started early, even before Duchene (and former Islander Blake Comeau, who was lost to injury after taking a deflected shot to the head) left. Scott Mayfield went to shoot a puck but Avs forward Sven Andrighetto swept it away _ and one-hopped it past Jonathan Bernier, his own goaltender, at 4:05 of the first.
Duchene and Comeau departed at 9:23. Barzal started his run of helpers at 12:58, stealing a puck from Nikita Zadorov and finding Jordan Eberle in the slot for a quick wrister, the first of two for Eberle on the night.
"We've been watching a lot of video, trying to figure out where we're going to be," Eberle said of Barzal. "We just missed one of those in Nashville last week and tonight we found it."
Nick Leddy scored twice on the now-lethal power play (9 for 16 over the last four games) in the first 4:24 of the second. On the first, Avs defenseman Erik Johnson tipped Leddy's point shot home; on the second, Bernier deflected Leddy's shot off the end glass and it bounced back, off Patrik Nemeth's leg and in.
"Just a weird game," Eberle said. "We capitalized on our chances but we certainly weren't as sharp as we wanted to be."
Johnny Boychuk scored off two Colorado sticks to make it 5-1 and Barzal set up another pretty feed for Eberle at 1:23 of the third for a 6-2 lead. Greiss needed to be sharp all night, finishing with 31 saves as the depleted Avalanche had the better of the play overall.
"It's disappointing the last 5-6 minutes we don't have his back," Weight said after rookie Alex Kerfoot scored twice in the last half minute. The Islanders deserved a better fate on Thursday in Washington, when they outplayed the Caps and came away empty-handed in a 4-3 loss.
Perhaps Sunday was their cosmic payback.
"We were sharp, we did the things we'd talked about beforehand," Weight said of Thursday. "We did none of that today. It's two points, but we've got to get better from this. I refuse to just put it in the cabinet."
