Well, that sucked.
1. The Islanders are, and also aren’t, who we thought they were
It became apparent quite early in this game that the Islanders had studied Montreal’s game plan heavily, because they were aggressive as soon as the puck dropped. They used this for much of the first period taking advantage of a Flyers team clearly caught off guard. Then after they got the lead and the second period began, we saw what the Islanders were during the regular season. They allowed the Flyers to enter the zone, then clogged up the neutral zone and played defense the rest of the way.