Marc McLaughlin scored the lone goal for the Bruins in a 5-1 loss against the New York Islanders on Saturday, March 2 at the UBS Arena. Kyle Palmieri scored his third career hat trick, his first since October 2019, and recorded an assist for the Islanders. This was a tough loss for Boston after they had fortunately broken their three-game skid on Thursday, February 29th against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Bruins lineup against the Islanders:
Marchand – Coyle – Pastrnak
van Riemsdyk – Zacha – DeBrusk
Heinen – Geekie – Frederic
Lauko – Boqvist – McLaughlin
Wotherspoon – McAvoy
Lohrei – Carlo
Forbort – Shattenkirk
Ullmark
Swayman
Islanders lineup against the Bruins:
Nelson – Horvat – Barzal
Engvall – Cizikas – Holmstrom
Lee – Pageau – Palmieri
Martin – MacLean – Clutterbuck
Pelech – Dobson
Romanov – Pulock
Reilly – Aho
Sorokin
Varlamov
Opening the scoring early at 16:28 of the first period – Kyle Palmieri gave New York a 1-0 lead when he beat Linus Ullmark five-hole from the right circle after he had taken a stretch pass from Noah Dobson at the blue line. At 14:33, Palmieri struck again on the power play with his second goal of the night. He smacked the puck into the open net at the left post after Bo Horvat’s one-timer hit off Parker Wotherspoon, deflecting to Palmieri. Scoring the hat trick, all three goals in just about 12 minutes, he extended the Islanders’ lead to 3-0. Palmieri scored from the edge of the crease after skating into the rebound of Ryan Pulock’s shot.
Anders Lee made it a 4-0 game only 46 seconds into the middle frame. Lee’s original shot off the rush hit Charlie McAvoy… he then tapped in his own rebound in the open net for his 16th goal of the season. Pushing it 5-0 at 9:36, Brock Nelson had gotten a backdoor pass from Bo Horvat and then scored off his own rebound. Marc McLaughlin put Boston on the board with little time left in the second period when he shot from below the left circle off a pass from McAvoy with a one-timer.
The score stayed at 5-1 throughout the third period, the Islanders winning with a 5-1 final.
Marc McLaughlin on coming up to help the team and the loss: “Whenever you get called up like this, you want to come in and try to help the team win… That’s my main goal coming up, so obviously it’s a tough outcome for us and not our best effort for this group.”
Brad Marchand on his messages to the team after the first period, and the game overall: “I just said we had to be more emotionally engaged and needed to have a better response… We knew that the first period wasn’t acceptable by our standards and bit us in the butt tonight – We need to back up the D a little bit better. Part of our system is we need to have the third guy high at all times, and four and five need to reload. I don’t know how they all happen but you need to make sure if there are guys, numbers in front of them, they have to pull out. So there’s a lot of different factors that go into having that many odd-man rushes, but definitely need to be better there.”
Notes:
– Linus Ullmark made a total of 21 saves for Boston, and Ilya Sorokin made 22 saves for New York.
– This was Marc McLaughlin’s first NHL game since January 29th, 2023.
– Anders Lee had a goal and an assist, and both Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Bo Horvat had two assists. Mat Barzal recorded an assist, extending his point streak to four games (one goal, four assists).
Kyle Palmieri’s hat trick was the first by an Islanders player since April 3rd, 2022 when Jean-Gabriel Pageau had one.
– Matt Martin left late in the third period with an undisclosed injury… Pavel Zacha left in the first period with a lower-body injury.
