WASHINGTON D.C. — The kids are more than all right. And now they’ll get to see if it can carry over into the playoffs.
It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy, but it sure was unexpected. On a night when the injury-riddled Islanders played two rookies on defense, and had their goalie — Christopher Gibson — making his first NHL start against the most potent team in the league, the Islanders pulled out a comeback overtime victory against the Capitals, 4-3, at the Verizon Center last night. With the win, the Islanders clinched a playoff berth.
Thomas Hickey scored on a feed from John Tavares at 2:13 of overtime and Gibson made three straight impressive saves in the first minutes of OT — including a breakaway by Evgeny Kuznetsov and another stop against the cannon of Alex Ovechkin — to erase third-period lapses that temporarily put the Isles in a two-goal hole.