Palmieri Scores His First Two Goals Since the ACL Tear as Islanders Beat Canucks 3-2

ELMONT, N.Y.

Eleven months ago, Kyle Palmieri's season ended on one of the strangest plays in recent memory: he tore the ACL in his left knee, got up anyway, stole the puck while hobbling toward the bench and set up a goal before he left the ice. On Tuesday night, the comeback produced its first exclamation point. Palmieri scored his first two goals since returning from the injury — the second of them the tiebreaker in the third period — as the New York Islanders edged the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 and deepened a miserable road trip for a team that cannot get home soon enough.

The goals were Palmieri's first since Nov. 18 of last season, scored ten days before the Nov. 28 injury that ended his year. It was his first multi-goal game since he scored twice against the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 23, 2024. For a 30-something winger whose game is built on timing around the net, the two finishes were the clearest evidence yet that the timing is coming back.

Fifty-Three Seconds That Flipped the First Period

Vancouver actually controlled stretches of the opening period, but the game turned in under a minute late in the frame. With 5:03 left in the first, Matthew Kessel's shot from the blue line glanced off Palmieri's stick and floated over goaltender Leevi Merilainen's shoulder for a 1-0 lead. Fifty-three seconds later, rookie defenseman Matthew Schaefer intercepted a clearing pass by Zeev Buium and found Matias Maccelli in the lower left circle; Maccelli, who spent last season with Toronto, beat Merilainen for his first goal as an Islander and a 2-0 lead. Schaefer finished with two assists.

Maccelli's night kept growing from there. Head coach Pete DeBoer lifted him from the fourth line to the top line alongside Palmieri and Bo Horvat mid-game, and the Islanders' own postgame honours captured the evening: Maccelli took the team's player-of-the-game oar, while Palmieri received the hardest-worker helmet, passed along by Logan Stanley.

The Canucks Push Back

Vancouver's reply came in the second period, and twice it ran through the Islanders' own mistakes. Max Sasson started the comeback 7:52 into the period, taking an Arshdeep Bains pass beyond Tony DeAngelo, splitting the defense and firing under Ilya Sorokin's glove to halve the lead. Then Palmieri was called for tripping, and the Canucks' power play cashed in with 1:05 left in the period: Filip Hronek, at the top of the slot, fed Elias Pettersson, who found Brock Boeser dropping to one knee to fire past a screened Sorokin and tie the game 2-2.

Merilainen, meanwhile, was the reason the game stayed within reach at all — he recorded 35 saves on 38 shots and drew praise even from the Vancouver side of the recap coverage on a night when his skaters gave him a 2-0 hole and a collapsing trip to work with.

The Winner, and What DeBoer Saw Coming

The tiebreaker belonged to the night's two protagonists. In the third period, Maccelli wrapped around behind the net and found Palmieri, who ripped a wrist shot past Merilainen's glove side to restore the lead for good. Vancouver pushed to the final horn — Marco Rossi beat Sorokin with a shot that arrived after time had expired — but the Islanders closed out the 3-2 win, with Sorokin making 24 saves.

DeBoer said afterward that he had seen the breakthrough forming. He told reporters he had seen signs of it in the previous game, which he considered Palmieri's best since returning, with real evidence the winger's timing was coming back — and that it was good to see him rewarded. Palmieri's own arc says the rest: the last image of his 2025 was a player refusing to leave a shift unfinished on a ruined knee; the first defining image of his 2026 is the same player deciding a game in the third period.

Two Teams, Two Directions

The Islanders have now split their first six games, an uneven start steadied by results like this one and by a goaltending situation elsewhere in the division that has rivals reeling — the Rangers are living life without Igor Shesterkin, which makes every point banked early in the Metropolitan race matter more. For Vancouver, the arithmetic is grim: the Canucks have lost the first four games of a six-game Eastern road trip and five straight overall, and the trip still has stops to go. Tuesday in Elmont was, in the end, a story about one team's returning scorer and another team's deepening slide — and about how thin the line between them was: one deflection, one interception, one wraparound pass, across sixty minutes.

For Palmieri, the night also rewrote the early shape of the Islanders' season. A deflection in the first period and a wrist shot in the third — one goal off his stick, one off his release — are the two ways he has always scored, and getting both in the same game, eleven months after the injury, is the surest sign yet that the comeback is a return to form rather than a farewell tour. That is worth more to Elmont than the two points: a winger who finishes like this changes how every opponent has to defend the Islanders' second wave.