The Islanders defeated the Boston Bruins 4-3 in overtime on March 25 after coming back from 2-0 down, with J-G Pageau scoring the first goal of the night for New York with some help from Leo Komarov. Let’s break it down.

Komarov and Pageau entered the zone on a three-on-two rush with Scott Mayfield. Komarov drove to the corner and near the goal line and threw a pass in front to Mayfield who couldn’t cleanly control the puck. Fortunately for the Islanders, it came right to Pageau who ripped the puck past Jaroslav Halak.

As Komarov moved up the ice, the Islanders had a three-on-two. No back checkers were around and some of the Boston forwards even went to the bench on what turned out to be an awful line change. Connor Clifton came over from the middle of the ice to guard Komarov, but did so poorly. Clifton dove and swiped his stick in a last-ditch attempt to stop Komarov, but took himself out of the play.

With Clifton out of the play, Charlie McAvoy turned his attention to Komarov and the puck, leaving Mayfield unguarded. Komarov got a pass through McAvoy, but it was a tough one for Mayfield to handle. The Islanders’ defenseman had his stick down in front of him, but the pass was between his legs. Mayfield re-adjusted his body and stick as the pass was coming but couldn’t get a clean hit on the puck. Nevertheless, It deflected off of his stick right to Pageau, who whacked it past Halak just ahead of a charging Anders Bjork.

The Bruins made a few mistakes that helped this goal happen. First, they changed when the puck was going towards their defensive end of the ice. In an odd-man rush situation, this is not the wisest idea. Players should always change when their team is on offense. This gave Komarov extra time on the rush so he could drive towards the corner without worrying about back checkers taking away his passing options.

Second, Clifton’s angle on Komarov was off. It seemed like he misjudged Komarov’s speed on the play and wasn’t able to recover. This turned the play into a three-on-one and led to the third mistake, which was that McAvoy turned away from Leddy and Pageau and got caught puck-watching. Komarov was in a low-danger area while Mayfield and Pageau were in high-danger areas. McAvoy gambled on taking away Komarov’s passing option and lost.

The Pageau goal helped jump-start the Islanders on the comeback trail Thursday night against the Bruins. His line has been the team’s best over the past few games and he’ll try to keep it up on March 27 in Pittsburgh.

John Smark