If you remember, when writing the forecast for the first match, we noted that the distinguishing feature of the New York Islanders team’s play is the maximum removal of attention to the defense. In the first match, this strategy worked for 100%. True, there was a very unusual super-activity of the Islanders in the first period (shots on target 15:4 in its favor) and Philadelphia were very lucky that Hart pulled a lot, otherwise everything ended much worse than in the first 20 minutes. In the second period, the situation has changed dramatically. Shots on target at 7:15 in favor of the pilots, but Varlamov defended perfectly within the Islanders goal. In the first half of the third period, the Islanders succeeded in 2 more sharp counterattacks.Philadelphia, hoping to save the match, changed the goalkeeper on the sixth field already in the 52-nd minute, but immediately got the puck into the empty net – 4:0 and “Pilots” calm down.
Vegas now needs to devote more time to defense and fight for their penny. It seems that the “Knights” played again in their own style and constantly tried to attack and throw shots, but the realization of chances in the second meeting seriously suffered from them. By the way, even after four missed goals, Peter Debourg did not dare to release Marc-Andre Fleury on the ice and this is a rather strange phenomenon. Note that in the playoffs, the previous match can be called one of the worst for the team, since in almost all games it scored more than two times and did not concede more than four goals and on that day absolutely everything happened. However, Debourg is an experienced technician and is able to find quickly solutions to major problems. So, what is the free prediction for the NHL match for today?
