Stat Trick: Leafs 5, Isles 4 (shootout)

Most nights, 4 goals is enough to win in the NHL.  Not Thursday.  It was enough for a point, but the Isles drop the game in a shootout.  On to the trick.

1.  The Isles twice rallied from 2 goal deficits.

2.  The Isles are now 10-3-2 when they score 4 or more.  All five losses have been by a 5-4 score with one ending in OT and tonight's shootout.

3. Each team scored their second goal of the game shorthanded.  (Dom Moore for the Leafs and Sean Bergenheim for the Isles)  Begenheim could have had a 2nd shorties had he converted on a penalty shot.

 and a few more...

4.  The Islanders have failed on all three of their penalty shots this season (Okposo vs NJ, Weight vs. Carolina) and have lost all three games by one goal.  The Isles were also on the wrong end of the only penalty shot against them this season when Simon Gagne scored against Yann Danis on Valentine's Day.  The Isles have now been stopped on 15 of their last 16 penalty shots (Ryan Smyth scored the only PS goal for the Isles in that stretch).

5. The Isles have lost 7 straight back-ends of back-to-backs (0-5-2).

6.  Despite the shootout loss, the Isles are 7-1-2 in their last 10 at home vs Toronto and are 5-1-3 in their last 9 overall at home.

7. Dean McAmmond scored his first goal in an Islander uniform; Mark Streit and Jon Sim had the other Islander goals.  Streit now has 12 goals on the season; only five NHL defenders have more.  Streit also leads the Isles with 44 points -no Islander defensemen has led the team in points since Denis Potvin did so in each of his first 4 NHL seasons.

8.  Joey MacDonald made 29 saves for the Isles while Vesa Toskala had 40 stops (6 in overtime) for the Leafs.  Toskala was one better in the shootout, though, allowing only a goal to Jeff Tambellini (now 3-4 career in shootouts) while Jason Blake and Tim Stapleton (the latter in his first NHL games) scored in the shootout for Toronto.  Blake also had  2 assists and 6 shots for the Leafs, who got regulation goals from Kulemin, Moore, Kubina and Anthropov.

9.Bruno Gervais was on for all 4 Isles goals and none of the Leafs goals, and finished +4.  The Isles attempted 89 shots at goal (44 on goal, 31 blocked by Toronto, 14 missed nets

10.  Up next:  The Sabres visit Long Island Saturday as the teams conclude the season series.  The Isles trail the series 2 games to 1 and 4 points to 3.  Buffalo embarassed the Isles 7-1 in their first LI vist..
Forever1940 is the nom de plume of Eric Hornick, statistician on Islander home telecasts since 1982.