RALEIGH, N.C. — Talk about a frantic final minute.
Kyle Palmieri got to the crease and scored the winner with 14.1 seconds left in regulation as the Islanders beat the Hurricanes, 2-1, on Friday night at PNC Arena.
Palmieri’s goal came 42 seconds after the Hurricanes had tied the game and seconds before Ilya Sorokin (20 saves) was forced to make a game-saving stop on Teuvo Teravainen.
The Islanders (33-28-9) moved within 11 points of the Capitals for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot with 12 games remaining. They conclude this five-game road trip against the Blues on Saturday night and improved to 12-4-1 since March 10.
Vincent Trocheck tied the game at 1 as he was open to Sorokin’s right with 56.8 seconds left in the third period with the Hurricanes skating six on five.
Frederik Andersen made 19 saves for the Hurricanes (46-18-8), who are trying to hold off the Rangers for the Metropolitan Division lead. They clinched a playoff berth by rallying for a 5-3 win over the visiting Sabres on Thursday night.
After sustaining pressure in the first period, the Hurricanes certainly looked like a team playing on back-to-back nights in the second period as they were outshot 8-1 and, on one sequence, Matt Martin was able to outskate everybody to negate an icing call.
This odd Islanders’ season, which started with a franchise-record, 13-game road trip as construction on UBS Arena was completed, opened with a 6-3 loss to the Hurricanes on Oct. 14.
Coach Barry Trotz just chuckled when asked what his reaction would have been that night had he been warned the path on which the Islanders were embarking.
“I had no idea,” Trotz said. “You knew it was going to be different. But you didn’t know all the landmines on the way. But, at the same time, we didn’t handle it as well as maybe we could have.”
Trotz said the rest of the regular season would be used for evaluation as president and general manager Lou Lamoriello formulates his offseason strategy.
For now, though, that’s unlikely to include any call-ups from their AHL affiliate in Bridgeport for auditions with that squad battling for a playoff spot.
“They’ve got to play well and try to get in,” Trotz said. “We’re going to play the lineup that we think we can tonight’s game with, plain simple. There’s no, ‘Let’s go bring this guy up and see what we’ve got.’ We’ve got the exhibition season. We’ve got to trust our coaching staff down there and we’ve got to trust our scouts to give us a true evaluation. We’ve seen snippets of guys that have come up so we’ll have to make evaluations at the end of the year on that.”
The Islanders took a 1-0 lead at 8:24 of the second period as Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored his fifth goal in a three-game goal streak. Palmieri stripped the puck from defenseman Ethan Bear behind the Hurricanes’ crease and got it to Martin, who found Pageau open in the low slot.
