{"id":498795,"date":"2026-03-02T05:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T05:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498795\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T05:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T05:59:10","slug":"surging-islanders-ride-last-minute-goal-from-anders-lee-to-win-over-panthers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498795\/","title":{"rendered":"Surging Islanders ride last-minute goal from Anders Lee to win over Panthers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anders Lee scored the go-ahead goal in the final minute, rookie Matthew Schaefer had two more goals and an assist and the New York Islanders edged the Florida Panthers 5-4 on Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p>Carson Soucy and Bo Horvat also scored and David Rittich made 28 saves as the Islanders won their fifth straight game and eighth in their last 10.<\/p>\n<p>The 18-year-old Schaeffer has 20 goals, three behind Hall of Famer Brian Leetch for the most by a rookie defenseman in NHL history.<\/p>\n<p>Sam Bennett scored twice and Sandis Vilmanis and Sam Reinhart each had a goal for Florida, which lost its second in a row. Sergei Bobrovsky made 21 saves for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, who are eight points out of a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n<p>Lee finished a backhand-to-forehand move for his third straight game with a goal to put the Islanders ahead for good with 32 seconds left.<\/p>\n<p>Schaefer had given the Islanders a 4-3 lead with his second goal of the game midway through the third period when he walked in from the blue line and beat Bobrovsky with a wrist shot.<\/p>\n<p>Reinhart tied it at 4 with 1:58 remaining after coach Paul Maurice pulled Bobrovsky for an extra attacker.<\/p>\n<p>Florida took a 2-0 lead with two goals in the first period. Vilmanis slid a backhander through Rittich&#8217;s legs at 3:44 and Bennett scored on the power play later in the period.<\/p>\n<p>The Islanders pulled within 2-1 late in the first when Schaefer&#8217;s slap shot deflected several times and bounced over Bobrovsky.<\/p>\n<p>Soucy tied it at 2 with less than eight minutes left in the second.<\/p>\n<p>Bennett restored Florida&#8217;s lead at 3-2 with his second goal, slipping a backhand under Rittich&#8217;s blocker. But Horvat scored his team-leading 25th goal to make it 3-3 with less than three minutes remaining in the second.<\/p>\n<p>Islanders forward Jonathan Drouin didn&#8217;t play because of a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>Panthers: Visit New Jersey on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Islanders: Visit Anaheim on Wednesday to begin a four-game road trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anders Lee scored the go-ahead goal in the final minute, rookie Matthew Schaefer had two more goals and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,99454,3,385,452,453],"class_list":["post-498795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-islanders","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}