Ilya Sorokin dazzles as Islanders earn important win over Blue Jackets
Ilya Sorokin stopped all 24 shots he faced and made Bo Horvat's goal on the first shot of the game stand up Sunday night for the New York Islanders, who edged the Columbus Blue Jackets 1-0 in a game with Eastern Conference playoff implications in Elmont, N.Y.
The Islanders (40-26-5, 85 points) snapped a two-game losing streak, moved ahead of the idle Detroit Red Wings (84 points) for the second and final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference and tied the Blue Jackets (37-21-11, 85 points) for third place in the Metropolitan Division, though Columbus has a game in hand.
The shutout was the seventh of the season for Sorokin and the 29th of his career, which extended his franchise record.
The Islanders and Blue Jackets are one point behind the Pittsburgh Penguins, who fell to the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-1, earlier Sunday.
Jet Greaves recorded 21 saves for the Blue Jackets, whose 12-game point streak (8-0-4) ended.
Horvat's goal capped an end-to-end sequence that began when Adam Boqvist outraced Blue Jackets center Cole Sillinger to a puck deep in the Columbus zone. Boqvist sent a pass beyond Mathieu Olivier to Anders Lee, who chipped the puck through the neutral zone. Horvat, with a step on Ivan Provorov, collected it at the blue line and fired a shot from the right faceoff circle beyond Greaves' stick at the 1:25 mark.
The Blue Jackets almost tied the game twice in the span of three minutes in the third, when Mason Marchment's shot from the goal line glanced off Sorokin with 11:05 left before Conor Garland's shot bounced off Sorokin's pads with 8:15 remaining.
The Islanders appeared to double the lead with 7:54 left, when Greaves deflected Horvat's shot, which glanced off Lee's stick and Olivier's skate before trickling into the net. But the Blue Jackets challenged and the goal was overturned due to goalie interference on Lee, who made contact in the crease with Greaves.
Sorokin turned back a shot by Sillinger with 3:10 left and then gloved a shot from the left faceoff circle by Kirill Marchenko 11 seconds later. He smothered a shot by Zack Werenski on the subsequent faceoff before landing on the puck as Kent Johnson's shot trickled behind him with 2:05 remaining.