"I just got beat," Alex Nedeljkovic was telling me at his stall late Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena after ... well, after he just got beat:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) February 21, 2024
Islanders 5, Penguins 4, overtime.
"That's not good enough," he'd continue. "That's really all it is. I just got beat."
Sure did. From 50-plus feet, straight out, unscreened. By a defensemen, Adam Pelech, who hadn't scored all season. And this after his side had scored twice in the third period to salvage the one point they'd produce.
I had to ask if, with Pelech whipping that wrister through Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang lined up like wickets, maybe he might've been ...
"Nope, nope," he'd cut me off, anticipating what I'd ask, "saw it the whole way. I just missed it."
The complete 54-second conversation:
"The guys played well tonight. We played a good game," he'd conclude. "They came out buzzing early, we responded well ... you know, I ... I ... we were good all night. We deserved two points. We deserved to win in regulation. I s--- the bed. I just dropped the ball for us tonight."
All right, let's get this out of the way: Goaltending hasn't been the issue, isn't the issue and isn't about to be the issue. That goes double for Nedeljkovic, who, even with these four goals, including this stoppable stinker for New York's fourth that he hated just as much as Pelech's ...
REILLY!!!! pic.twitter.com/crkc30LoKO
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) February 21, 2024
... he's still got a .919 save percentage that's fifth-best in the NHL among any goaltender who's started more than a third of his team's games. That's better than Tristan Jarry's .914, and that's far more than anyone could've expected when Nedeljkovic was signed last summer to a one-year, $1.5 million contract. Heck, he might be the best bargain in the league.
And never mind the candor and accountability, the kind that's seldom shown by his partner or others in the room.
As Mike Sullivan worded it, "Yeah, I don't think it was Ned's best. But he's a great teammate, he competes, he's a battler ... but I thought he fought hard. And when you look at his body of work for us this year ... I just think he's a real fierce competitor."
Yep.
So ... anything else to discuss?
Oh, right. This:
NHL
That's only the Eastern Conference's wild-card picture, to be clear. There are six other teams ahead of this pack. And eight points between the Penguins and the Red Wings at the final wild-card spot. And three others teams they'd need to pass, including these Islanders. And 29 games left on the schedule. And -- a-hem! -- 16 days until the NHL's trade deadline, which might render most of those 29 games moot depending upon the direction Kyle Dubas takes.
So yeah, there's plenty more to discuss.
See, our man Ned wasn't the defenseman who handed the puck to the Islanders on that fourth goal up there. That was Ryan Graves, who does that sort of thing as if it's a trademark.
Our man Ned wasn't the defenseman who own-goaled his own guy. That was Erik Karlsson:
Just tapppp it in. pic.twitter.com/XXgWYwpI11
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) February 21, 2024
Our man Ned wasn't the defenseman turned inside-out by Brock Nelson for his eleventy-billionth career goal against the Penguins. That was otherwise outstanding Marcus Pettersson.
Our man Ned wasn't part of the power play that ended by gifting Mat Barzal a breakaway bursting out of the box.
Our man Ned wasn't part of the power play, for that matter, that'd go 0 for 3 against the NHL's worst penalty-killing team, drawing -- and deserving -- a vocal ire from the 18,016 on hand unlike any I can recall witnessing in Pittsburgh in this category.
Our man Ned wasn't a critical part of this cast's Core that continues to not score. That fell to Evgeni Malkin, still stuck on two goals over his past 19 games, putting all of two pucks on the New York net.
Our man Ned wasn't the GM who claimed off waivers a 5-foot-6, 25-year-old alleged AHL whiz -- already forgot his name -- and stuck him onto Malkin's line, only to see him splattered all over the ice all evening.
And our man Ned definitely wasn't the one who began the three-on-three overtime by sending out a dysfunctional, disinterested and just-demoted-on-merit-to-the-third line Reilly Smith ... rather than ... oh, pretty much anyone, even the waiver claim. But, at the risk of revealing my inner Scotty Bowman-level knowledge of this beautiful sport, I might've sent out the greatest player of our generation for the often-pivotal opening shift of such scenarios.
Now, I'm quite comfortable putting forth all of the above while also offering this: I really, really liked a lot of this game, from the Pittsburgh perspective, chiefly the collective fire that built into the two goals within a 56-second span of the third period to tie ...
That's Puustin-EN THE NET! pic.twitter.com/wSuTAOxAgP
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) February 21, 2024
THE DOC IS IN! 🩺 pic.twitter.com/LJN8KPoF0P
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) February 21, 2024
... and that those goals were authored by two young, enthusiastic potential pieces of this franchise's future in Valtteri Puustinen and Drew O'Connor.
The latter stoked the crowd as much as any single goal all season in this place and, beyond that, seemed to have the same impact on his teammates, who pushed that much harder over the final dozen minutes.
Imagine that.
I asked Sullivan how much it meant to see contributions from Puustinen and O'Connor, within the context that both were far more productive than just the goals:
"For sure," he'd reply. "You know, I thought we've been encouraging that for a while now. To get the types of contributions through our lineup, not just scoring goals, but helping us get momentum, offensive zone time, hanging onto pucks and things of that nature ... I thought we had all of the lines contribute in that regard. If we continue to do that we're going to win games."
Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll do so, but it'll be too late.
Dubas is scheduled to hold a 2 p.m. press conference after the team's practice Wednesday in Cranberry, Pa., his first formal meeting with local reporters since early December, one that's been billed by the team as a question-answer opportunity regarding the trade deadline.
Not much will come from this. Not much can come from it, if one thinks about it.
This GM's in no position to pull the plug on a team that's eight points back of Detroit with two games in hand and 29 overall on the schedule. No one this side of a social-media keyboard warrior would do that, and Dubas won't be the pioneer.
He's also in no position to pull the plug on Sullivan. Certainly not now. The No. 1 barometer for any GM in evaluating a head coach or manager in any sport is whether or not the players are playing hard for that individual. And for all its flaws, this team, as this game mostly reinforced -- meaning through the players on the roster who, unlike Smith and a couple others, genuinely care -- can't be accused of quitting. On Sullivan or each other.
"There's no quit," Eller would say, this after his second-period goal revved up the rally to follow. "We've got to keep the faith and the belief. It's tough right now when you only get one point, but we showed that we have no quit in us, regardless of how things went during the game. And that's going to be important going forward, that mentality. Never stop fighting."
Sullivan hasn't exactly been Mr. Sunny-side in recent days, but he expressed a similar stance.
"I mean, obviously, we're disappointed," he'd say of losing the point in overtime. "But I try to look at it objectively and look at the process and give the players a fair assessment of how the game was played. You can't always control if the puck goes in the net or not. All you control is your effort, your energy, your intent, your compete level, your execution level, and I thought for a lot of the night it was a pretty inspired effort by a lot of guys. I thought we had a lot of guys that were playing a determined game and I thought our intentions were in the right spots."
"A lot of guys," he'd conspicuously stress, not once but twice.
Weed the rest out, take two from the Canadiens and Flyers on the rest of this homestand, fly out to Vancouver with more than crossed fingers, and maybe the dialogue's a little different, yeah?
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Adam Pelech, Islanders D
2. Brock Nelson, Islanders C
3. Drew O'Connor, Penguins LW
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Rickard Rakell–Sidney Crosby–Bryan Rust
Drew O'Connor–Evgeni Malkin–Matthew Phillips
Reilly Smith–Lars Eller–Valtteri Puustinen
Jansen Harkins–Jeff Carter–Colin White
P.O Joseph–Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson–Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves–Chad Ruhwedel
And for Patrick Roy's Islanders:
Anders Lee–Bo Horvat-Mathew Barzal
Pierre Engvall–Brock Nelson–Kyle Palmieri
Simon Holmstrom–J-G Pageau–Oliver Wahlstrom
Matt Martin–Casey Cizikas–Cal Clutterbuck
Alexander Romanov–Noah Dobson
Adam Pelech–Ryan Pulock
Mike Reilly–Scott Mayfield
THE FEED
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