Bailey, Islanders keep rolling against Penguins

Josh Bailey and Kyle Okposo celebrate one of five goals (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

          When center Josh Bailey entered the Nassau Coliseum last night, he entered with a purpose.  And then he left the Coliseum with a bang.  Bailey posted five points, having a part in all the Islanders' goals, in a 5-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins.
          It was the second consecutive game the two teams played against each other, with the Islanders winning both.  Ironically or not both games the Islanders outplayed one of the elite teams, and won both by the same score of 5-3.
          One player in particular came ready to play this Penguin team.  Josh Bailey was having a good season before these two games, having eleven goals and twelve assists, for twenty points.  In these last two games against Pittsburgh, Bailey posted two goals and six assists, for eight points.
          The Islanders are red-hot, coming off a five-game road-trip in which they won four of them, the Islanders continued their stellar play.  Now the Islanders have won five of their last six games, and have only five more left to play.  Though the Islanders have a very slim, and unlikely chance of making the playoffs, sitting nine points out, they are doing their best to fight their way in. 
          The first period saw the Islanders take their first lead eleven minutes into the game.  At the 11:07 mark, center Marty Reasoner finally broke through and scored his first goal as an Islander, putting a wrist shot through the pads of the Pittsburgh goaltender, Marc-Andre Fleury.  That lead would hold into the start of the second period.
          Pittsburgh would tie it up at the 8:37 mark of the period, when right winger Pascal Dupuis scored a short-handed goal with a wrist shot past the glove of Isles goaltender, Al Montoya.  The goal was Dupuis' twenty-fourth of the year.  After that the period belonged to the Islanders.  Starting at the 16:36 mark, when right winger Kyle Okposo would take a shot that would ricochet off the skate of Pittsburgh defenseman Deryk Englland, and past Fleury to make it 2-1.  Exactly two minutes later, at the 18:36 mark, Josh Bailey would get his first goal of the game, burying a breakaway backhand, while the Isles were shorthanded.  
          The Isles would extend their lead at the 5:52 mark of the third period, when Okposo finished off a one-timer pass from Bailey, to make it 4-1 Isles.  The goals were Okposo's nineteenth and twentieth of the year.  Pittsburgh would claw their way back with two goals in ten minutes.  It started at the 8:20 mark, when center Jordan Stall would split two Islanders defenders and bury a backhander past Montoya, to cut the Isles' lead to 4-2.  The goal was Stall's twenty-fourth of the year.  Ten minutes later, at the 18:29 mark, center Evgeni Malkin would bury his own wrist shot, to cut the Isles lead to one at 4-3.  The goal was Malkin's team leading forty-seventh of the year.  The Islanders would halt the comeback and pad their lead at the 19:55 mark, when Bailey buried the puck into the empty Pittsburgh net, to seal the game at 5-3.  
          The Isles have five games left to play, and the first of the five will be on Saturday.  The Islanders will play their first of their last three home games, against the Boston Bruins on Saturday, puck drop is 1 PM.