Islanders 2
Devils 1
The American goalie outshone the Canadian stalwart, but the local Sendoff to Turin wasn’t all Olympic optimism for Team USA.
The rib injury USA defenseman Brian Rafalski thought was behind him flared up and forced him off the bench late in yesterday’s 2-1 Islanders victory over the Devils at the Meadowlands.
Rafalski’s still heading to Turin today, but his health is now a concern for the American squad, which he helped stabilize in the 2004 World Cup.
“I thought I was doing well. I wanted to keep going and not have any issues going [to Italy],” Rafalski said after the Devils lost at home for the first time in 2006.
“Maybe I got too comfortable,” Rafalski said of the recurrance of the injury he suffered in Tuesday’s victory over Tampa. “It was a freak thing. I guess I got outside my body [reaching].
“It’s no worse than it was [initially], and now I have 3½ days off.”
Team USA will have to hope Rafalski’s rib injury doesn’t recur in Italy. He left the bench 5:08 into the third and didn’t return.
The Americans could take heart, however, from Rick DiPietro’s performance in the Islander net, preventing the Devils from setting an asterisk-marked team- record home winning streak.
DiPietro, a leading candidate as the American goalie, triumphed over Canada’s Martin Brodeur in the finale before the Olympic break.
Brodeur tipped his hat to DiPietro.
“Rick played tremendous. He made the saves when he needed to,” Brodeur said.
Scott Gomez found encourgement for the American squad from DiPietro’s performance.
“Now that I’m on his [USA] team, it’s nice to see. He played great. But Marty is always like that,” Gomez said.
DiPietro thwarted USA teammate Brian Gionta four times in the third, as the Devils sought to force overtime.
“I was just trying to score on him and he won the battle,” said 33-goal-man Gionta.
“He had a couple of good looks,” DiPietro said of Gionta. “One that went wide was very big for us.”
DiPietro protected a one-goal lead for nearly 30 minutes to earn the victory, ending the Isles’ two-game (0-1-1) non-winning streak.
Jason Blake’s 21st put the Isles in front with a 5-on-3 tap-in at the right post, from Alexei Yashin’s feed through the crease from the left corner at 12:40 of the first.
Sergei Brylin leveled the score with 20.7 seconds left in the first period. Grant Marshall took Colin White’s coming across the slot and turned and dropped the puck for Brylin, who put his 12th through DiPietro.
Yashin’s 18th goal, at 10:17 of the second, went off Rafalski’s stick and stood up as the winner.
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Devils have seven players going to the Olympics, the Islanders four. New Jersey is sending Brodeur for Canada, Gomez, Rafalski, Gionta and Paul Martin (taxi squad) to Team USA, Patrik Elias to the Czech team and Viktor Kozlov to Russia’s squad. The Isles have DiPietro and Mark Parrish headed to Team USA, Yashin to the Russian team and Miro Satan to Team Slovakia. Alexei Zhitnik had to bow out of Team Russia with an ankle injury.