Brock Nelsons OT goal leads Islanders to thrilling comeback win over Hurricanes

Tony DeAngelo was in, Ryan Pulock was out after one shift, Ilya Sorokin came in for Marcus Hogberg in overtime and the Islanders kept their momentum rolling with a comeback victory over the supercharged Hurricanes.Other than that, not much was going on Saturday at UBS Arena.Forty-eight games in, it’s that time of year for the Islanders.The season is hitting an inflection point in these weeks before the 4 Nations Face-Off break.

What happens now dictates whether or not a team that’s trying desperately to prove it can still be a contender will get a chance to do so post-March 7.As for this match against the Hurricanes in which storylines abounded, start with the immediate ramifications of a 3-2 overtime win over a Carolina team that extends this winning streak to a season-high four games on the back of Brock Nelson’s game-winning goal — exactly what the doctor ordered for a homestand that amounted to make-or-break on the season.By the time the Islanders, who played Friday night against the Flyers, appeared to have their legs under them, the Hurricanes had already gone up 2-0 with goals from Jack Roslovic and Sebastian Aho, the second coming on a fluky bounce of the puck from behind the net, off Isaiah George’s skate and in.The Islanders cut the lead in half on Alexander Romanov’s tally late in the first and spent the second steadily pressing, but failed to solve Pyotr Kochetkov, who stopped Bo Horvat and Jean-Gabriel Pageau on breakaways with two poke checks.The breakthrough finally came 6:26 into the third, when Anders Lee followed Horvat’s initial shot by jamming it into the net, putting paid to the momentum the Islanders had steadily built for 30-plus minutes.That opened up what had been a tight match with the Islanders steadily controlling possession into a track meet, with the teams trading chances throughout the rest of a highly entertaining third period.With Andrei Svechnikov’s shot off the crossbar being the closest either team got to a winne...