It’s a long season, so sometimes a special game on paper ends up being a flat contest on the ice.
That ... wasn’t a problem during the New York Rangers’ first visit to Brooklyn to face the New York Islanders.
Wherever you place the ratio of Rangers - Islanders fans, the Barclays Center was probably as loud as it has been for an NHL game as the Islanders won 2-1 via a shootout.
You know how people respond to worries about league scoring by talking about how great a 2-1 game can be? There are plenty of times when that reeks of naivete, yet these two teams provided Exhibit A for that argument on Wednesday.
Another game where "widen the nets!" people need to tell me how NYR/NYI is better if it were 4-4 instead of 1-1. 56 shots. Great action.
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) December 3, 2015
Both goalies were tested throughout the game. Jaroslav Halak got the win in stopping 33 out of 34 shots; Henrik Lundqvist was brilliant in his own right in making 36 out of 37 saves.
It seems fitting that there was just one shootout goal, too, with Kyle Okposo making the difference.
Yes, many gripe about the anticlimactic shootout ending ... but in a way, this provides an appetizer for future games. Perhaps these two teams will even make a series of it in 2016 after it nearly happened last year?