SAVED: Al Montoya stones Minnesota’s Darroll Powe in the Islanders’ 2-1 win yesterday in Uniondale. (Getty Images)
Islanders coach Jack Capuano stewed about his team’s poor puck management and individualistic plays but also lauded his team for sacrificing and being courageous.
In a game with two distinctly different acts, the result was the Islanders’ first win of a season, a 2-1 edging of the Wild yesterday afternoon at the Coliseum.
By taking eight minor penalties, the Islanders had to kill off 12:04 of power-play time, including a second period with 44 seconds of 5-on-3 and 49 seconds at 4-on-3.
“A win’s a win,” Capuano said. “The whole surge started and the momentum changed when we turned some pucks over and it led to a lot of their power plays. But overall I’m happy that the guys got the win.”
The momentum change happened when the teams took the ice for the start of the second period. The Islanders went ahead 2-0 in the first 20 minutes behind a power-play goal from Andy MacDonald at 9:05, followed two minutes later by a tip-in by Frans Nielsen off a Mark Streit shot-pass.
“You take away from this game our special teams and take away our first period and how we played,” Capuano said. “That’s how we have to play hockey.”
The Islanders got nine shots on net in the first period, and followed it up with five during the next two combined as they often played down a man. They relied heavily on journeyman goaltender Al Montoya to close out the win.
“I got to take my hat off to the [penalty] killers on this team,” said Montoya, who finished with 20 saves, 18 of which came in the second and third periods. “They did an unbelievable job, throwing their bodies in front of some of the heaviest shots in this league. It says a lot.”
Capuano has started Montoya for the first two games of the season, but would not make a declaration about his plan for mixing in veterans Rick DiPietro and Evgeni Nabokov going forward.
What Capuano did make clear was that he does not like it when his team starts “worrying about goals and how many minutes that we play.”
“We got to learn from that,” Capuano said. “When there’s an opportunity to get pucks deep, or [when] we don’t have plays with it, to put pucks into safe areas, we’ll have success.
“If we get cute in the neutral zone and turn pucks over, you play in your end all night.”