PHILADELPHIA — It didn’t take the Flyers too long to even their record after an awful start — or for the Islanders to cap off an 0-3 road trip.
Matt Read scored two goals, Steve Mason made 36 saves, and the streaking Flyers beat the Islanders 5-2 on Saturday night.
John Tavares and Eric Boulton scored for the Islanders, who have lost eight of 10.
“As coaches, if we were looking at it and it was structurally or systematically, we would change it for sure,” Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. “When you talk about battle level or when you talk about protecting the wall and not protecting the danger area, that to me, you don’t change that, that’s hockey. There’s nothing you can do about that.
“You have to win your battles. We’ve played many systems since I’ve been here, but systems don’t work unless you battle. I’m not faulting on the battle level tonight, but a couple of plays we broke down because we were on the wrong side of the puck.”
The Flyers are 10-10-2 after their sixth win in seven games. They are 6-0-1 in that span and 9-3-2 since a 1-7 start.
“When we were 1-7, one of our goals was to get to .500,” Read said. “We have to continue to build off this and keep going.”
Claude Giroux, Wayne Simmonds and Brayden Schenn also had goals for Philadelphia.
Despite playing their second game in two nights, the Islanders — following Friday’s loss at Pittsburgh — made the Flyers look like a tired team in the third period.
“The second half of the game, I think we were the better team,” Nilsson said. “I think as long as we can play like that for the full 60 minutes then we can win some more hockey games.”
Tavares scored on a backhander off a perfect pass from Thomas Vanek to cut it to 3-1 late in the second. It was just the second even-strength goal allowed by the Flyers in seven games.
Boulton scored his first goal in 73 games to get the Islanders within one goal 2:39 into the third. Boulton was alone in front when the puck trickled through off a faceoff, and he backhanded it past Mason.
Tavares had a chance to tie it a few minutes later but Mason made the save. The Islanders had several chances before Flyers coach Craig Berube called a timeout and calmed his team down.