Rantanen, Hall debut with Hurricanes in OT loss to Islanders

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall each made his debut for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 3-2 overtime loss to the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Saturday.

The forwards were acquired Friday in a three-team trade also involving the Colorado Avalanche and Chicago Blackhawks that sent forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury to the Avalanche.

Rantanen played 18:54 and had five shots on goal; Hall played 11:36.

“It was obviously a weird 24 hours, for sure,” Rantanen said. “Everything happened quick. It was surprising a little bit, but I’m obviously excited to be here. It’s a very good team. There are a lot of good players, and the setup here is really good, so I’m excited to be part of it, for sure.”

Brock Nelson scored at 2:03 of overtime after he beat Pyotr Kochetkov glove side on a 2-on-1 rush.

Alexander Romanov and Anders Lee also scored for the Islanders (21-20-7), who have won four straight. Marcus Hogberg made 24 saves. Ilya Sorokin came in for overtime and made one save after Hogberg sustained an upper-body injury.

“One thing I'm very proud of is we were resilient,” Islanders coach Patrick Roy said. “But more than that, we showed character. I mean, down 2-0 in the past, that could have been worse. But we stopped the bleeding, and I was very proud of the way the guys played and stuck to it. It was so good for us. It’s a good win for us. It's a nice way to learn that we can come back in games and be patient, and I thought that's what we did. And we kept playing well defensively. And when we did not, we had great saves by our goaltender.”

Jack Roslovic and Sebastian Aho scored for the Hurricanes (30-16-4), whose four-game winning streak ended. Kochetkov made 23 saves.

“Hockey is weird,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Our first two periods were terrible, and our third was actually really good. We had tons of chances. We kind of get a weird one on a high stick. Is it in the zone, or is it out of the zone? And [after] the face-off, it’s in the net. And then, we’re in overtime. It was kind of a weird game.”

Lee crashed the net and scored on a rebound at 6:26 of the third period to the game at 2-2. Kochetkov could not hold on to a Bo Horvat turnaround slot wrist shot, and Lee jumped on the loose puck at the glove-side post.

“We got a lot of resolve right now. We’re a resilient group,” Lee said. “We've grinded through a lot this year to this point. And of late, we've done our best to pull ourselves out of it, and tonight was a great back-to-back win, a tough win.”

Roslovic gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 5:18 of the first period. Jesperi Kotkaniemi sprung Roslovic for a rush chance before he beat Hogberg high blocker side from atop the right face-off circle.

Aho extended the Hurricanes’ lead to 2-0 at 6:30 after his pass from behind the Islanders’ net banked off Isaiah George’s skate and under Hogberg’s right pad.

Romanov cut the Islanders’ deficit to 2-1 at 17:53. Off the rush, Casey Cizikas found Romanov just inside the blue line before his shot deflected off Jaccob Slavin’s left knee and under Kochetkov’s glove.

“Now, [we’ve won] four in a row at home, and we've been talking about taking advantage of the stretch,” Nelson said. “Now we're proving to do so, and we feel like we have something good going. You can tell everyone's just buying and believing going out there. Tonight was no different. To find yourselves in a 2-0 hole on the second half of back-to-back against a tough team, we did a great job of just sticking with it.”

NOTES: New York defenseman Anthony DeAngelo made his season debut after he signed a one-year contract on Friday. He had two shots on goal in 25:07. … Aho has four points (two goals, two assists) in his past two games. … Horvat extended his point streak to five games (seven points; four goals, three assists). ... Adam Pelech extended his point streak to a career-high four games (four assists) for the Islanders. … Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock left the game with an upper-body injury 15 seconds into the opening shift after he got tangled up with Jackson Blake behind the Islanders net.