NEW YORK (AP) Andrew Ladd and Jason Chimera scored their first goals with the Islanders and helped New York to a needed victory in a finale of a long stretch of home games.
Cal Clutterbuck and Ladd scored 1:39 apart midway through the third period to lift the Islanders over Vancouver 4-2 on Monday night, giving the Canucks their ninth straight loss.
Chimera and Nikolay Kulemin also scored and Jaroslav Halak stopped 30 shots to help the Islanders improve to 2-3-2 in their last seven.
”We had a little bit of puck luck tonight,” New York coach Jack Capuano said. ”The last few games we played well, we just haven’t got results. It’s good for the guys to get that feeling.”
Ladd and Chimera, New York’s top free agent signings in the offseason, had combined for just four assists through the first 12 games.
”It’s great for me and Jason, just getting that good feeling to put a couple of pucks in the net,” Ladd said. ”Sometimes all it just takes is one and build off from there.”
Daniel Sedin and Markus Granlund scored, and Ryan Miller had 28 saves for Vancouver, which fell to 0-8-1 with eight straight regulation losses since opening the season with four wins.
”It’s tough. We need some good results,” Canucks coach Willie Desjardins said. ”It’s nice we got the first (goal) tonight, it’s been a long time since that’s happened. … We got one on the power play, and that hadn’t happened in a while, either. … We didn’t take it away in the third like we needed to.”
The Bruins beat the Sabres 4-0, with Tuukka Rask rebounding from his first loss with 32 saves for his second shutout, and Brad Marchand and David Krejci scored power-play goals in the second period.
David Pastrnak had a power-play goal and Riley Nash scored for the Bruins, who won for the fourth time in five games. Rask recorded his 32nd career shutout after losing 5-2 against the New York Rangers on Saturday. He improved to 7-1 this season.
At Sunrise, Florida, Reilly Smith scored a tiebreaking goal with 4:28 left, Roberto Luongo made 34 saves and the Panthers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-1.
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