Per source, the monkey is no longer on Brock Nelson's back.
Brock Nelson did it.
The New York Islanders center broke his 17-game scoreless streak on Thursday night in their 4-0 win over the Vegas Golden Knights, getting his first red light since Nov. 27.
Nelson received a nifty feed from Mathew Barzal off the rush, before he fired it past Adin Hill's glove to give the Islanders a 2-0 lead against the NHL’s top team in the standings, the Vegas Golden Knights at 5:30 of the second:
During the second intermission, Nelson shared with MSGSN's Shannon Hogan that he had a conversation with his former teammate, analyst Thomas Hickey:
Later on in the intermission, Hickey shared that he was talking with Brock about the team and the power play before Nelson just looked at his former teammate and asked him what he was seeing in his game.
“Don’t get down on yourself,” Hickey said. "All it takes is one good round and one good shot, and you find yourself again.”
Nelson had 27 shots in the 17 games during his scoreless drought. He owned plenty of scoring chances and found his fair share of posts, but the pucks were just not finding the back of the net.
Hickey’s advice was to focus on the process, not the result, and with a clean look in Thursday’s matchup against Vegas, Nelson got the much-needed monkey off of his back.
Michael Ostrower contributed to this report.