ST. PAUL, Minn. — The first thing Matthew Schaefer said in his postgame scrum Thursday night was not about his overtime winner. It wasn’t about his three-point night, nor his second straight game logging 30 minutes, nor that he outplayed Quinn Hughes on a night when both superstar defensemen had it going.
Instead, Schaefer wanted to talk about his turnover that led to the Wild tying the game with under four minutes to go in regulation.
“That’s obviously my fault there,” Schaefer said. “But honestly, we learned from it.”
It’s questionable how much of the fault was his, but it was one last way Schaefer managed to impress everyone in a night full of them.
Down to five defensemen for most of the night after Ryan Pulock exited with an upper-body injury having played just 51 seconds, the Islanders bested the Wild 4-3 on the 19-year-old’s overtime winner, earning what was easily their best victory in the season’s first month.
“I know everyone talks about Schaef, and he deserves every accolade he gets, but this was a team win tonight,” head coach Pete DeBoer said. “We had four lines and five ‘D’ that were committed to giving us a chance to win and playing the right way.”
He was right on both counts.
This was the Islanders’ best team game of the season. It was also Schaefer at his jaw-dropping best — playing half the game, scoring twice, assisting a third goal and winning most of his shifts in the toughest of matchups.
“I mean, when I was 19, I was a sophomore at Michigan,” Hughes said, having scored two points to fall short of Schaefer’s three. “And when Cale [Makar] was 19, he was a freshman and did one more year or two more, I forget. But same with [Adam] Fox, he did three years. [Zach] Werenski too. All those guys I just mentioned were in college at this kid’s age.
“So he’s obviously really good.”
The praise from inside the Islanders’ own room was just as effusive.
“At least once a period, I curse to myself on the bench, or on the ice even, just ’cause he’s very special,” Logan Stanley said.
The team effort, though, was nearly as good as Schaefer’s individual effort.
The Islanders never were overwhelmed by the Wild’s speed. They protected the middle of the ice in their own zone and played smart, physical hockey for 60 minutes. It didn’t quite keep Minnesota’s cadre of superstars quiet, but it certainly kept the home team from taking over the game — while making sure it was played on the Islanders’ terms.
“We’ve talked about it since training camp,” DeBoer said. “When we have detail in our game, play hard like that in hard areas of the rink, we give ourselves a chance to win.”
The Isles entered the third period tied at two but with a huge 8-3 edge on high-danger chances at five-on-five.
The chance to retake the lead came after the Islanders killed off their third penalty of the night. After Victor Eklund won a puck battle along the boards, it floated to Adam Pelech in space. The defenseman’s shot hit Michael McCarron in the leg before getting past Jesper Wallstedt.
There was still plenty of game left from there, and an Islanders defense that had been stout all night started to show some wear late in the game. Matt Boldy tied it on the rush with 3:53 to go after a couple of poor shifts in a row put the Islanders on their heels.
It salvaged the Wild a point, but for a second straight game, Schaefer played all of overtime.
Instead of all five minutes, though, he netted the winner on a two-on-one rush after 33 seconds.
The only development about which the Islanders might be quietly worried is that of Ilya Sorokin. In his first start after letting in six goals against the Stars — a performance that could easily be called both an outlier and a product of poor defense — the goaltender let in three softies.
First, just 27 seconds into the game, Joel Eriksson Ek beat him clean from 41 feet out. Then, late in the second period, Hughes lifted a sharp-angle backhand past Sorokin’s pads to tie the game at two. Even Boldy’s tying goal was one Sorokin probably should have had, despite Schaefer’s rush to blame himself.
“No one liked the second goal and [the] first, the start of the game,” Sorokin said. “But after, I tried to stay focused and play the full game. I don’t like, again, the goal with two minutes left. As a [team], I liked our overtime goal. It’s a big ‘W’ against a really good team.”
