Blackhawks, Connor Bedard Fall 2-1 After Islanders Finally Break Through In Third

After not building on an early lead, a couple of mistakes doomed the Blackhawks in 2-1 road loss to the New York Islanders on Tuesday.

Bo Horvat and Simon Holmstrom scored in the third period to lift the Isles to the win.

Horvat ripped in his team-high 31st goal from the left circle on during a power-play to tie it 1-all just 1:33 into the third. Holmstrom put New York ahead 2-1 at even-strength at 9:25 — and eventually win it — by banging a loose puck past Petr Mrazek.

Mrazek helped keep the Isles at bay, stopping 27 shots for the game.

“We played similar hockey throughout the whole game I thought, it was just a matter of it going in,” Horvat said. “We had our chances in all three periods. Thankfully we got the job done.”

The line of Dickinson, Connor Bedard and Philipp Kurashev clicked early as Dickinson opened the scoring 7:49 in. He completed a give-and-go and 2-on-1 with Bedard after a New York turnover.

Dickinson skated down the slot and tapped in Bedard's feed from the right side with only Adam Pelech back. See story in link:

Dickinson's 21st goal extended his career high. Bedard leads NHL rookies with 21 goals and 37 assists in 61 games.

“They outplayed us and they deserved to win,” Bedard said. “Overall, I didn’t think we were terrible. We had some chances but not really enough high-quality chances.

Bedard, who has been on a shooting spree, had four shots on goal in this one. He attempted three that were blocked and missed with another.

The 18-year-old leads all first-year players with 194 shots on net.

Ilya Sorokin made 18 saves for New York, which pulled within one point of Washington for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference.

“I thought we had a lot of looks to score,” Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock said. "You can’t get frustrated in those situations, you gotta keep going. We got the power play and power play came up huge, getting us that goal and we were able to build on it.”