Isles Lose Lead to the Ducks 5 - 4

Once again the young upstart Islanders chased an Olympic medal winning goalie from their crease. Although I was surprised they pulled Jonas Hiller after only 3 goals. They could have left him in for a few more.

Kyle Okposo looked no worse for the mysterious injury they kept hinting at but never actually telling us about. He scored one goal at 19:02 of the first after the Isles were down 2 - 1. Richard Park started the scoring, but his goal celebration was cut short by Beleskey's goal a few ticks after.

Proving he was perfectly recovered, Okposo also scored on the Power Play at 2:42 of the second which caused Hiller to take a seat and let McElhinney have a chance. As Kyle said, he hasn't had that many go his way, so -- he'll take 'em!

John Tavares "who seems to have that goal scorers touch" scored his own Power Play goal at 14:31 of the second. There was a moment we didn't know if it was tipped in by Matt Moulson, but the replay showed, it was all John's. Add that to his assist on Kyle's earlier PP goal and the boy was already having a two point night with plenty of hockey yet to be played.

Freddy Meyer playing another very intelligent game and according to Scott Allen during intermission, everyone was very disciplined and staying out of the box. The Islanders took the Anaheim crowd out of the game mid way through the second. Gary and Claire Harding made a cameo appearance from the crowd as they are following the team on their West Coast trip.

But Dylan Reese does end up in the box on an interference call that sent Ryan sliding into the end boards knees first as one of his team mates had to jump over him. It was a scary moment. Ducks didn't make anything of their power play chance, but they had another one less than two minutes later as Bruno Gervais was called for tripping.

At 9:53 of the third, the inevitable happened -- a goal was credited to Jason Blake and the score was now 4 - 3. It is only Blake's 13th goal of the season, a far cry from the 40 goal season that made him a hot commodity.

The only scrum was Jon Sim and Koivu who collided and exception was taken by Brookbank and both were sent to cool off. The teams skated 4 on 4 for two minutes and when they came out there was 6:19 left of the third.

Biron made some amazing saves to keep the Isles up and maintain his winning streak.

With about four minutes left, I started to nod off. I never expected to stay up as long as I did,l but it was an exciting game. It was almost one that went into over time as 2:35 a puck almost snuck past Biron, and actually may have have, but it wasn't caught by the refs. They then had three good chances to score on Biron, but couldn't.

With one minute left, the ducks pulled their goalie. With only 32 seconds left, as my damn freakin' husband was telling me the game was going into overtime, as Ducks #17 blasted one by a screened Biron. I wanted to kill him because I was so tired.

Luckily, my Islanders heard me as overtime lasted about a blink of an eye and the Ducks ended up winning 5 - 4 on a Koivu goal that I'm sure Biron would like to have had back. His streak is broken. But at least I can go to bed!