ELMONT, N.Y. — Scott Mayfield and Robin Salo each scored twice for the New York Islanders in a 7-1 win against the Anaheim Ducks at UBS Arena on Saturday.
Anthony Beauvillier and Oliver Wahlstrom each had a goal and an assist for the Islanders (1-1-0), who delivered Lane Lambert his first win as coach. Anders Lee had three assists, and Ilya Sorokin made 22 saves.
“It’s a hard league to score in,” Lambert said. “You need help from your defense.”
Video: ANA@NYI: Salo scores in 3rd period
Troy Terry scored for the Ducks (1-1-0) in the first of a five-game road trip. John Gibson allowed five goals on 27 shots and was pulled after the second period. Anthony Stolarz made nine saves in the third period.
“It’s embarrassing for everyone,” Anaheim coach Dallas Eakins said. “I think this is where you’ve got to [do] a little bit of soul-searching. It should hurt like [heck] tonight.”
Video: ANA@NYI: Mayfield fires in his second goal in the 2nd
Mayfield gave New York a 1-0 lead at 10:34 of the first period when he poked a rebound from Lee, and Dobson made it 2-0 when his shot ricocheted off. Kevin Shattenkirk‘s stick blade into a half-empty net at 12:08.
“It just worked out,” Mayfield said. “We played well in the offensive zone.”
The lead grew to 3-0 at 5:34 of the second Jean-Gabriel Pageau sprung Wahlstrom for a semi-breakaway, which the right wing finished by lifting a backhand over Gibson’s pads.
Mayfield scored his second of the game at 12:55, a slap shot from the top of the right face-off circle to make it 4-0, and Beauvilier one-timed a Ryan Pulock feed from the left circle 1:32 later at 14:27 to make it 5-0.
“With us turning it into a track meet, it started turning into odd-man rush after odd-man rush, and I certainly wasn’t going to have any more of that for John going into third,” Eakins said. “We have an excellent goaltender, we have a world-class goaltender. But we can’t just rely on him to do it all by himself.
“We’ve got lots of guys who can score here and make plays, but you can’t win in this league unless you’re willing to play good-layered defense.”
Video: ANA@NYI: Wahlstrom scores in 2nd period
Terry cut it to 5-1 at 1:29 of the third, but Salo scored at 13:03 and with 58 seconds left for the 7-1 final.
“Adversity is a great opportunity to get better,” Eakins said. “We were just slapped multiple times in the face with adversity tonight, so it will be very, very interesting to see how we react.”
NOTES: It was the first time the Islanders had two defensemen score two goals in the same game since Jan. 12, 1993, an 8-2 win against the Calgary Flames (Vladimir Malakhov and Scott Lachance). …Forward Cal Clutterbuck was activated from injured reserve by New York and made his season debut. He had three shots on goal and four hits in 12:03 of ice time. … The Islanders placed defenseman Sebastian Aho (upper body) on injured reserve, retroactive to Oct. 8. … Ducks defenseman Dmitry Kulikov was minus-4 in 21:11.
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