OTTAWA – Special teams made all the difference for the Islanders as they opened a four-game road trip with a tense 4-2 win over the Senators on Monday at Canadian Tire Centre.
The Islanders (11-6-0), who won their second straight and for the ninth time in 11 games, went 2-for-3 on the power play and killed off five of the Senators’ six man-advantage opportunities, yielding just a five-on-three goal.
Semyon Varlamov stopped 36 shots for the Islanders. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, an Ottawa native who spent his first six-plus seasons with his hometown Senators, scored the winner as he got to the crease for a power-play goal at 8:21 of the third period to make it 3-1.
The Senators (5-9-1) had snapped an 0-6-1 skid with Saturday’s 4-1 road win over the Flyers. Claude Giroux pulled the Senators within 3-2 at 13:08 of the third period as he beat Anthony Beauvillier to the crease.
But Brock Nelson clinched it with an empty-netter.
Despite their penalty killing success, discipline issues did cost the Islanders in the second period.
Ross Johnston, inserted onto the third line with Josh Bailey not in the lineup, took a needless roughing call against Franklin Square’s Shane Pinto in front of the Senators’ bench at 7:11. Defenseman Scott Mayfield then caught Brady Tkachuk with a high stick in front of the Islanders’ crease, drawing a four-minute double minor and putting the Senators on a five-on-three advantage for 34 seconds.
It took just 11 seconds of the two-man advantage for Drake Batherson to blast one past Varlamov from low in the left circle off Tim Stutzle’s feed.
The Islanders killed off the remaining 3:49 of Mayfield’s penalty. Still, it marked the eighth time in nine games the Islanders have allowed a power-play goal after starting the season 28-for-28.
Defenseman Noah Dobson regained a 2-1 lead for the Islanders with an unassisted shot through traffic at 13:15 of the second period.
The Islanders started sluggishly again, struggling with their exits from the defensive zone because they had trouble connecting on even the simplest passes.
The difference this time was they were able to take the lead despite their sluggish start.
Oliver Wahlstrom, inserted onto the second power-play unit with Bailey absent, rifled a shot past Cam Talbot (31 saves) from the right circle on the man advantage to give the Islanders a 1-0 lead at 11:53 of the first period.
It snapped an eight-game goal drought for Wahlstrom and marked just the sixth time in 17 games the Islanders had scored the opening goal. Mathew Barzal’s secondary assist made him the first Islander since Pierre Turgeon in 1992-93 with 17 assists in the season’s first 17 games. He collected No. 18 on Pageau’s power-play goal.
