UNIONDALE, N.Y. -- The New York Islanders used 30 seconds of free time to change the momentum and earn a valuable two points.
Jason Blake scored with 8:12 left and added an empty-net goal to help the Islanders beat the Florida Panthers 4-2 on Saturday night.
Florida took a 2-1 lead midway through the game, and Islanders coach Steve Stirling took his one allotted 30-second timeout.
"Florida had huge momentum, and I didn't want us to get down 3-1," Stirling said. "I wanted to slow their momentum down."
Blake sent a wrist shot past Roberto Luongo from the left circle to give New York its first win of the season when trailing after two periods (1-17-2-0). Blake also added a shorthanded empty-net goal with a minute left.
Radek Martinek and Trent Hunter also scored for the Islanders, and Garth Snow made 25 saves.
"It (the timeout) had an impact," Islanders forward Cliff Ronning said. "We were heading the wrong way. We were getting outplayed, outhustled and outworked."
Eric Beaudoin and Steven Weiss scored for the Panthers, winless in three straight (0-2-1-0). Luongo made 27 saves.
The best chance in the scoreless first period came with less than two minutes left. Snow made a sliding pad save on Juraj Kolnik's in-close try.
Martinek opened the scoring 80 seconds into the middle period when his high wrist shot beat Luongo, who was screened.
The Panthers struck later for a pair of goals in a 1:48 span to take the lead. Beaudoin tied it at 9:30 when he tucked a rebound of Pavel Trnka's shot just inside the left post.
Sloppy defense led to Weiss' go-ahead goal at 11:18. Left alone to Snow's left, Weiss took a perfect centering pass from Byron Ritchie and buried it into the open net.
Hunter tied it on New York's first power-play opportunity, tipping Adrian Aucoin's shot past Luongo at 3:32 of the final period.
"When we scored that power play goal early in the third, we seemed to pick up a lot of momentum on our side," Islanders defenseman Kenny Jonsson said.
The Panthers had a chance to close the gap on the Islanders, but instead, now trail by nine points, while the Islanders climbed into a seventh-place tie with Montreal.
"It's frustrating," Ritchie said. "This game meant a lot in the playoff race. We played well for two periods. I don't know what happened in the third period. We seem to give up a lot of chances when we have the lead. We might have had a mental collapse."
Notes
- Panthers defenseman Lyle Odelein played his 1,000th NHL game.
- Islanders defenseman Eric Cairns missed the game because of the flu. Teammate Michael Peca returned after missing three games with a chest injury.
- The sellout crowd of 16,234 was the fourth this season for the Islanders.
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