Islanders drop Game 3 to Hurricanes, 3-2, on brink of elimination

NEW YORK (AP) — Defensemen Brent Burns and Dmitry Orlov got Carolina off to a fast start and the Hurricanes held on to beat the New York Islanders 3-2 on Thursday night for a 3-0 lead in the first-round series.

Sebastian Aho also scored for the Hurricanes and Andrei Svechnikov had two assists. Frederik Andersen stopped 29 shots. Carolina won for the eighth time in nine games at UBS Arena, which opened for the 2021-22 season.

“We didn’t really play our way tonight, it wasn’t there,” Svechnikov said. “But we take the win and run away.”

Brock Nelson and Pierre Engvall scored for the Islanders. They are a loss away from being eliminated by Carolina in the first round for the second straight year.

Ilya Sorokin, getting the start after Semyon Varlamov went in the first two games, was pulled in the second period after giving up three goals on 14 shots. Varlamov came on and stopped all eight shots he faced.

“I thought it was a hard-fought game, there were not many chances on both sides,” Islanders coach Patrick Roy said. “We had a good push in the third. We had our chances and the puck wasn’t bouncing our way.”

Trailing 3-2 in the third period, New York pressed for the tying goal, outshooting Carolina 11-3, but couldn’t get the tying goal.

“We knew it was coming, they were going to give it everything they had,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “That’s exactly what happened but obviously Freddy came up with a couple of huge saves and that’s the difference in the game.”

With the Hurricanes leading 3-2, Andersen made a nice save falling backward on a shot by Alexander Romanov about 6 1/2 minutes in the third period. The puck lay in the paint briefly before the goalie covered it up.

Andersen made another stellar save while sitting on the ice, reaching up to grab a shot by Romanov with 5:48 left.

“One you go down you just try to steal one and see where the puck is,” he said. “You got to see it to have a chance for it to try to come up with…