Montreal 3, New York 1

New York Islander Fan Central | 1/15/2008 11:32:00 PM | | |
Islanders website: Had Ted Nolan's comments following tonight's 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadians.

"We tried our best to compensate against the long road trip with shorter shifts," said head coach Ted Nolan. "To come off of a trip like this, it was tough to overcome, but I give the guys a lot of credit. It just wasn't good enough."

"We started off the first seven minutes okay, but then we had that lull and they capitalized," said Nolan. "If you give teams so many opportunities while they're shorthanded, they're going to capitalize."

"If those those two ones that hit the posts go in, then it's a totally different game," said Nolan. "I thought the second period, going into the third period, we found our legs."


NYI Fan Central Comments:
Disappointing because this is the kind of defensive effort that should get you at least one point. Consideing no Witt and Martinek it was a very good effort, even if Montreal missed a few in close.

Game could have gone either way tonight. Isles hit two posts, Montreal scored a goal off a fourth line turnover and a Campoli pp pinch. Puck seemed to be bouncing a lot on what was a new ice surface. Montreal has the best powerplay in the league and did not score a goal.

Have to give Montreal the credit because they are an excellent skating team that plays it's defensive system very well with the lead and seemed to clog up the neutral zone most of the night. For a team coming off a very long trip Islanders did not play poorly and had some jump but also had a lot of shots blocked. Tomas Plekanec made his shots count and the Isles did not outside of Richard Park banging in a centering pass from Bill Guerin. Satan after the goal had two great chances and he looked like he knew he could have scored the tying goal.

DiPietro had a save in this game I think on Koivu where he was out of the net and just stopped a stuff with his legs extended and only his pads like a behind the back kind of play. I have to check that again tomorrow.

Even with a Montreal icing setting up a chance with DiPietro pulled they could not get the puck down low, it was almost too easy for Montreal to break in and score the open net goal.

Isles needed at least a point out of this game and could not find a way like they did against Florida to get the game to overtime late.