Islanders down Rangers for the third time 2-1

NEW YORK (AP) -Rick DiPietro earned his 100th NHL victory with an 18-save effort Monday night and the New York Islanders beat the New York Rangers for the third time this season, 2-1.

DiPietro, the first goalie ever drafted No. 1 when the Islanders took the Massachusetts native in 2000, followed up a 1-0 win Friday against New Jersey with another stellar performance against Long Island’s biggest rival.

The Islanders are 8-1-2 in their last 11 against the Rangers, and now have 500 road wins in franchise history. DiPietro earned his 10th victory over New York and snapped the Rangers’ winning streak at five.

The Islanders’ last seven games were all decided by one goal and in regulation.

The Rangers came home after a four-game road sweep and had won nine of 10, but are 0-3 against the Islanders.

Ruslan Fedotenko and Josef Vasicek staked the Islanders to a 2-0 lead in the second period.

Michal Rozsival scored for the Rangers, who got 22 saves from Henrik Lundqvist but fell to 8-3 at home.

After a sluggish first period in which the teams combined for 11 shots, and the Islanders were whistled for icing five times in the first 3:11, the action picked up in the second.

Fedotenko broke the scoreless deadlock 8 seconds in, taking advantage of a penalty against Rozsival.

The puck squirted free following a neutral zone faceoff and slid into the Rangers zone. Fedotenko tracked it in the left circle and smacked it past Lundqvist to make it 1-0 on the Islanders’ sixth shot.

Vasicek did most of the work minutes later to double the lead. Sean Bergenheim worked the puck loose along the boards and nudged it to Vasicek, who raced down left wing on a 3-on-2 break. He carried all the way to the left circle dot and snapped a shot that sailed past Lundqvist’s left shoulder at 5:51.

When Blair Betts went off for tripping 2 seconds later, the Islanders seemed primed to turn this one into a rout.

Not so fast.

The Rangers’ run of offense from defensemen continued when Rozsival earned his second short-handed goal in two games at 6:37 to cut the deficit in half. Counting all the goals scored in the Rangers’ 4-3 overtime win at Pittsburgh on Saturday - including two by Rozsival - they had five straight tallies from defensemen.

Rozsival has seven goals in 21 games this season after posting a career-best 10 last season.

The rest of the period belonged to hard-hitting on both sides and lots of pressure by the Islanders. The Rangers had an 11-8 edge in shots at one point, but the Islanders closed the period with 11 of the final 13.

Lundqvist was the main reason the Islanders didn’t cash in, jumping, sliding and diving at loose pucks as bodies landed all around him. He even absorbed a sliding hit, followed by an elbow from Mike Comrie that went unpenalized and led to a scrum that finished with Sean Avery and Fedotenko going off for roughing.

Avery has toned down his pregame antics that helped precipitate two recent skirmishes in warmups and earned fines for the Rangers and himself, but he is every bit as antagonistic during play.

After DiPietro covered a loose puck in the crease during the first period, Fedotenko cross-checked Avery from behind into DiPietro. The fiery Islanders goalie jumped up and punched Avery in the head and drew a roughing minor.

Notes: Rozsival has 40 goals in 420 NHL games. He had never scored one short-handed before Saturday. … The teams combined for five roughing penalties, but there were no fights. … Vasicek has eight goals, two more than he scored in 63 games with Nashville and Carolina last season.

Source: The NHL.com