Wildcats vs. Islanders - Mar. 17/22

[countryboy]

The Islanders play host to their closest geographical rivals this evening with an anticipated matchup with the Moncton Wildcats.

Injuries continue to be a factor. We'll see Brabanec swap in with Boyd going down with injury.

Game time is 7:00 PM.

[bd]

Can't take any team lightly at this point. Moncton has some good young players and a goalie that is great when he's on.

Should be an entertaining game!

[Deleted]

Dominating win by the Islanders with a 5-0 shutout as they outshot the Wildcats 47-19.

Patrick Guay had the hattrick with two of them on one-timers in his wheelhouse and the third on a scramble late in the 3rd.

Lukas Cormier had a dominant game with 1-2-3 totals and was solid defensively and had a couple of solid hits. He's Team Canada ready.

Lapenna made a couple of solid stops - but it was a fairly easy shutout with the Wildcats never really having much in the way of sustained pressure.

It was my first look at Jakub Brabenec and he didn't look like he has any lingering injuries. He's really good one on one the way he can deke inside - outside - inside without breaking stride. He was held scoreless - but he gives the Islanders another dimension as a depth scoring threat.

Kieran Gallant had a good game - very good down low and creating havoc around the net.

Capacity is now up to 75% and attendance showed 2750 which I would guess is a good crowd for a Thursday night game in Charlottetown.

I thought Stairs, Budgell and Jarrett Todd had good games. Budgell had 2 assists. Stairs and Todd were held off the scoresheet but seemed to do things that made you take notice. Stairs is a grinder with skills. He's a handful for the opponents' D.

3 STARS:

1. Cormier - he's at the top of his game - dominates in all situations

2. Guay - 3 goals - 2nd in the league with 38 - plays in all situations

3. You could take your pick between Lapenna - Budgell - Gallant or Stairs - but I'll go with Stairs. He stood out to me as a thorn to the Wildcats.

[Deleted]

The numbers were a little late coming back from this game - not sure why.

SOG were a telling 50-17 in the Islanders' favour.

The Islanders won 158 puck battles while the Wildcats won an impressive 145. This is the only game where I've seen more than a combined 300 in a game.

Hits were also high with the Islanders 16 and the Wildcats 13. I hadn't noticed that there was so much heat out there.

The most telling number other than the score and SOG was time in the O Zone - 18:21 for the Islanders and 7:55 for the Wildcats. The ice was tilted a bit.

D Trudeau (21:02) and F Budgell (21:08) led in TOI for the Islanders. D Bellamy (23:07) and F Loshing (19:10) led the Wildcats.

Lukas Cormier led all players with 8 SOG. Kalmikov led the Cats with 4.

Patrick Guay scored 3 goals and led the way in scoring chances from the home plate with 6 of his 7 SOG deemed dangerous. Kalmikov had 3 dangerous chances for the Wildcats.

Cormier led the Islanders in hits (4); shot blocks (3) and takeaways (9). I thought he was the best player on the ice (1-2-3).

Bellamy led the Wildcats in hits (4) and had a game-high 15 takeaways. He was very noticeable all game. Kalmikov led the Wildcats with 3 shot blocks.

The Islanders played a dominant game. I was reading a recent story in the Guardian where Jim Hulton seemed happy to be winning games with defense first with the injuries - and like they say - sometimes when you look after your own end first - it somehow leads to offense at the other end.