Islanders make their shots count

The Islanders took the first victory of the home-and-home series against the Penguins by a 6-3 margin at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday night, and it was a pretty sizable one.

Does that mean the Islanders necessarily played a complete game? No.

If the Islanders play like this in the next meeting between the two teams on Thursday in Brooklyn, will they see the same outcome? Probably not.

The Islanders, despite leaving Pittsburgh with a win, weren't entirely pleased with their effort after the game.

The teams headed for the locker room 2-2 after the first period, but that was just about the only category in which the teams were evenly matched. The Penguins outshot the Islanders, 14-5. The Penguins led the Islanders in shot attempts (including missed shots and blocked shots), 22-11. If it weren't for Robin Lehner having such a strong showing in the first period, the Islanders may have doomed themselves.

"I just thought our first period was maybe one of our worst periods of the season," Barry Trotz said after the game. "We had great goaltending, we stole the period."

Matt Martin wasn't satisfied with the way the Islanders began the game, either.

"I don't think that's really the way you want to do it against them," Martin said of the Islanders' win. "Our goaltending was great and held us in the game. We were able to be pretty opportunistic with our chances. They were definitely the best team through the first period and the first part of the second."

The Islanders won the game in the second period, and it was because of their high-quality chances. This heat map shows the number of unblocked shot attempts after the Islanders took the lead midway through the second period.

The Islanders were clearly outshot, but most of their chances came from the high-danger area within feet of the net, and they were able to capitalize on those. The Penguins were generating many high-danger chances too, but Lehner was able to bail out his team.

"We didn't give up a lot of chances," Mike Sullivan said. "Unfortunately, the ones that we gave up were in the net. It just seemed like it was one of those nights ... We beat ourselves a bit with the chances we gave up. They were just too high-quality."

Sullivan attributed some of the loss to puck luck, specifically with the goal from Martin in the second period, saying, "It was one of those type of games where a bounce like that goes off the stanchion and we get caught on the outside."

The spot in which the puck hit the boards caused it to fly up into the air and fall right into the lap of Casey Cizikas. Olli Maatta, not expecting the weird bounce, wasn't in a position to defend Cizikas, who was able to easily slide the puck to Martin for the goal.

If the Islanders play on Thursday the way they did on Tuesday, the Penguins have a good chance of splitting this home-and-home series. If the Islanders want to pull out another win, they're going to have to play a full 60 minutes.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY