Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic
PHILADELPHIA — A gong show, this was not.
Any notions that lingering tensions over Max Tsyplakov’s hit on Ryan Poehling two weeks ago might erupt Thursday, with the Russian facing the Flyers for the first time since, were put to bed pretty quickly.
Tsyplakov and Scott Laughton dropped gloves less than 5 minutes into the game, Tsyplakov lost his first career fight, and that was that.
Instead of being centered around the animosity that looked to be at a high point between these teams during their two recent matches at UBS Arena, the Islanders and Flyers turned in a muddy, sloppy game at Wells Fargo Center.
No matter, the Islanders will not be complaining after a 3-0 victory extended their winning streak to six in a row and resulted in their jumping the Flyers, Rangers and Canadiens in the Eastern Conference standings.
In their last game of the month, the Islanders also sealed their best points percentage in January since 1983 with a 9-3-0 record (.750), per team statistician Eric Hornick.
“I think we’re confident in our game, and I think what’s great is when things aren’t going well on a night like tonight, we don’t deviate,” Anders Lee told The Post. “We don’t try to do too much. We stick with what makes us successful, and I think that worked itself out throughout our game, and the right opportunities came because of that.”
After a thoroughly entertaining pair of wins over Carolina and Colorado, it would be generous to put this one in the category of a grinding victory.
Through the early stages, both teams pretty much just looked exhausted.
However droll it was to watch, though, the Islanders got the better of this particular war of attrition, taking a second-period lead before locking it down in the third.
Simon Holmstrom broke a scoreless draw at the 10:02 mark of the second, rattling a puck off iron and in for a second consecutive game.
Rookie winger Marc Gatcomb doubled the Islanders’ lead just over 7 minutes later after the Flyers failed to pick him up on a line change, finishing Kyle MacLean’s breakaway feed for an easy first NHL point and goal.
On a night when Ilya Sorokin was near-unbeatable in the crease, two goals looked like they would be more than enough.
And when Kyle Palmieri made it three, driving the net and beating Ivan Fedotov at four-on-four halfway through the third, it put a bow on the match and broke a 14-game scoreless stretch for No. 21.
“I think all year, the highs and lows, we’ve reiterated our belief in each other,” Palmieri told The Post. “And I don’t think that’s really something that’s wavered inside of our room. I think to be playing this way and getting rewarded for the way we’re playing right now, it’s huge.”
Seeing and believing, though, are two different things.
“You can talk about it ’til you’re blue in the face, but I think realistically, until the results are there, it’s hard,” Palmieri said. “I think that the way we lost and pissed away points early in the season, it was even more frustrating. But I think as a team, we really just had to find it and get the ball rolling in the other direction. And that’s the way it’s going right now.”
The Flyers had gotten a puck by Sorokin early in the night, appearing to score on a Matvei Michkov power-play shot.
But Sorokin looked sure that he was interfered with, and after a challenge by coach Patrick Roy, video review confirmed Morgan Frost had impeded Sorokin’s ability to make a play.
Sorokin, who has gone four straight starts with two or fewer goals allowed, ended up stopping 23 shots, at times bailing out the Islanders on a night when their zone exits got messy a little too often.
This might count as the ugliest victory of the Islanders’ current streak, but it also may be one of the most important thus far.
For all the winning they’ve been doing this month, a move up the standings had yet to materialize for the Islanders.
At least for the moment, it suddenly has — with a chance to make up two crucial points on the Lightning on Saturday.
The standings are jam-packed right now, with just six points separating the wild-card leading Bruins from the 15th-place Penguins at the start of Thursday.
What the Islanders do one day easily can be undone the next.
There can be no letup now.
But they’ve come an awful long way from a month ago.
