“We’re playing good hockey.”
You’ve heard this sentence from Patrick Roy an awful lot so far this season and as a fan watching the New York Islanders through their first 22 games, you probably never want to hear it again. An 8-9-5 record does not justify what Roy keeps saying after his team gives away crucial points, with Monday’s come-from-ahead 4-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings the latest maddening example.
In one sense, Roy is right, however. His Islanders are doing the things teams normally do to win games. Things like suppressing scoring chances, limiting power plays by the opposition and taking leads deep into the third period.
This is not a normal hockey team though. The Islanders are breaking NHL statistical measures and tradition by doing the right things to win but rarely winning, either by not producing enough offense, blowing leads or both. Roy is confused, the players are confused, you’re confused, I’m confused.
They should be better. They are, in a sense, playing good hockey. And yet here the Islanders sit, tied for 22nd in points percentage, heading toward Thanksgiving outside the playoff picture. That’s not a fatal blow to the season but it can’t continue this way.
Here are 22 things we’ve seen and we may see from this wild, wacky season:
• Bizarre stat No. 1: The Islanders have held opponents to one goal or less through two periods in 14 of their 22 games. Recipe for success, right? They are 5-5-4 in those games. So they’ve somehow managed to lose nine times when shutting their opponents down through 40 minutes.
• It’s easy to forget, with the blown leads and all, that the Islanders are in the midst of another spate of terrible injuries to key players. It’s been a theme the last few seasons — they come in bunches and the Isles are left scrambling. Anthony Duclair has missed 17 of 22 games and only just resumed skating on his own in the last 48 hours. Mathew Barzal has missed 12 games and is still off the ice. Adam Pelech has missed 11 games and has also just resumed skating. Alex Romanov has missed 11 games, though he appears to be out of the woods despite missing Monday’s game with an illness.
That’s two top-four defensemen and two top-line forwards. Not many teams could overcome that and still put up points. And, judging by the timelines for the three still-absent players, we won’t see any of them in action for at least another week or two.
• So, some good news: Since Barzal went down with injury after the Oct. 30 loss in Columbus, the Islanders are 5-4-3. To do that without your most creative offensive player is impressive. To even go 4-4-3 without Pelech and Romanov (mostly) is impressive. You have to at least tread water without your big-minute guys and the Isles, by the standings, have been doing that.
• But also, more bad news: The Islanders were 3-5-2 with Barzal and Pelech in the lineup. They were shut out four times in Barzal’s 10 games. So they didn’t bank enough points before the injuries hit (and you obviously can’t predict those things) and now, when they’ve tightened up their game and been a more straight-line offense, they need to finish off these games despite missing those key players.
• Brightest spots: Kyle Palmieri and Brock Nelson are having excellent seasons, leading the team in goals and points. Both are pending UFAs, so there’s a black cloud behind this silver lining. If Lou Lamoriello sees a team that needs to start retooling as we approach the March 7 trade deadline, no Islanders would be more attractive on the trade market than these two.
The fear, of course, is that the Isles do just enough to stay in the playoff hunt but not enough to warrant more than just sneaking into the postseason for the third year in a row, which means keeping both of these veterans and then deciding whether to sign them.
• Nelson is a particularly difficult case. He’s sixth all time in games played, seventh in goals and ninth in points. Quietly and steadily, he’s built one of the most impressive post-dynasty Islanders careers of anyone who’s played here. It means something to fans like eight-year-old Henry Schafer, who has had leukemia for three years, came to Hockey Fights Cancer night on Saturday hoping for his favorite player to score a goal and saw Nelson do just that. The connection between longtime Islanders and the Island itself is meaningful.
But he’d also be perhaps the top forward on the trade market if Lamoriello were to start selling. That means a first-round pick or a conditional first plus a prospect in all likelihood. You weigh that against an extension that could make Nelson one of just four 1,000-game Islanders and a player who hasn’t aged out of his scoring years at all … It’s not an easy decision.
• The same goes for Palmieri, who has shaken off a couple of injury-plagued seasons at the start of his Islanders career to have 17 goals in his last 32 games dating to the end of last season. He’s going to be 34 in February, true, but the Islanders have no one with his mix of full-zone scoring skill and versatility coming up. If there’s a two-year deal to be made, that feels like a smart play.
• Anders Lee has proven people wrong (including me) who thought he was permanently washed after a miserable 2023-24. There were signs, especially in the brief playoff run, that Lee wouldn’t let himself fade into irrelevance and he’s brought himself back to a very respectable level with eight goals in 22 games. When Duclair and Barzal return Lee likely goes back to third-line duty with J-G Pageau and either Pierre Engvall or Simon Holmstrom but Lee has shown Roy that he can still handle top-six minutes.
The Islanders still have a decision to make on Lee, with a year left at $ 7 million next season — he’s a prime buyout candidate if the Islanders decide to go down the retool route. But as with Nelson, Lee has had an all-time Islander career and he’s arguably the second-best captain in team history. A guy who does and says the right things, never shying away from the hard conversations he had with me and other media last year. It’s a business, but those decisions aren’t so simple.
• Bizarre stat No. 2: Monday marked the 13th and 14th tying or go-ahead goals the Islanders have allowed in the third period. For context: The Islanders have allowed 13 first-period goals all season, as well as 13 second-period goals.
• Their third periods this year have brought so many sports analogies to mind. Think of Chuck Knoblauch, the old New York Yankees second baseman who suddenly couldn’t throw a ball properly to first base in 1999 — there’d be a grounder to the right side and Yankee fans would hold their breath, hoping he could make the throw.
The Islanders enter the third period and you can hear a pin drop in UBS Arena while fans wait for the worst. Somehow, some way, it always seems to happen. If there were an explanation and I could give it, I’d be doing TED talks for sports teams and not this job. Roy has no answers. The players have none.
It’s a collective mental block, I guess you’d call it. A team playing well for 40 minutes that gets tense when it commits a penalty or has a breakdown or misses a chance to extend its lead. Then, the worst.
That they’ve now given up tying and go-ahead goals to lose in regulation three times in the last five games is the most alarming part. You have to get points, that’s the name of the game. Coming away with zero three times you had the lead inside of 15 minutes to go or 10 minutes to go is the sort of thing that makes general managers do rash things, even Lamoriello, the most composed GM there ever was.
• More bright spots: Max Tsyplakov has been better than advertised as an all-around player. When you saw his surprising scoring jump in the KHL from 10 to 31 goals last season, you figured he was a big body who hounded pucks around the net. Instead he’s been a full-ice player, one who can throw a hit on the forecheck and along the wall and can distribute quite well, as his nine assists attest.
He still needs to cut down on the careless penalties, especially late in games, and he is perhaps too willing to defer to Nelson and Palmieri. But credit to Lamoriello and Jim Paliafito — Tsyplakov is a find and should be an Islander for a stretch.
• Continuing on the good stuff: Ilya Sorokin is maybe not all the way back to his 2022-23 level but he’s a lot closer than he was last season. Given the offseason back surgery and that he missed all of training camp, Sorokin’s play so far has been well above what I thought he’d be capable of this early in the season. He’s top 10 in goals saved above expectation and save percentage. Just not getting the run support.
• Roy has said he’s going to keep a rotation going in net and it seems like Sorokin gets two starts and Semyon Varlamov gets one. That works in theory and you don’t want to tax Sorokin, who succumbed to overuse last season. I think you have to find a spot in the schedule soon where Sorokin can grab three to four starts in a row and see what comes of it. Varlamov was blameless on the game-winner Monday but he hasn’t been sharp enough, with a negative GSAx so far. Let Sorokin run with some starts in December.
• Bizarre stat No. 3: Since the start of the 2023-24 season, the Islanders have spent the least amount of time shorthanded (419:12) of any team in the league, 31 minutes less than the second-ranked team. Also since the start of 2023-24, the Isles have given up the third-most power-play goals (77) while also being tied for second with 13 short-handed goals.
The most feast-or-famine penalty kill in the league. Mostly famine.
• The PK failures highlight another area of real concern this season: the fourth line. The set-it-and-forget-it days of the Identity Line were already fading in the last couple of years but now it’s a full-blown crisis. Kyle MacLean is struggling mightily in his second NHL season, guilty in Roy’s eyes of trying to do too much at times. Casey Cizikas has found some traction on a third line with Engvall and Holmstrom but the Cizikas-MacLean pairing before the injuries was a mess. And Oliver Wahlstrom, gamely trying to remake himself as a fourth-liner, hasn’t been a fit.
• When Duclair and Barzal are back there are some decisions to make for Roy and Lamoriello. They could return to the four lines that started the season, with Duclair and Barzal flanking Bo Horvat, the second line staying intact, Lee-Pageau-Holmstrom and then maybe a Cizikas-MacLean-Engvall fourth line. Matt Martin’s quest for 1,000 games would be delayed but he’s ideally the 13th forward here; that leaves Wahlstrom not only out of the lineup but in need of being sent elsewhere, either via trade or waivers.
Engvall’s brief demotion to start the season seems to have lit the proper fire under him. Holmstrom has had a solid stretch with increased minutes of late. So Wahlstrom seems to be the odd man out and perhaps this time he’d find a change of scenery through a waiver claim or trade.
• On defense, Pelech’s return might mean the end of the lovely Isaiah George story. On the list of good things to have happened this season so far, George’s emergence ranks almost as high as Sorokin’s return to form. Maybe higher. The Islanders didn’t know that the 20-year-old George had it in him to look so mature and ready for the NHL this soon. There have been cracks and breakdowns but his skating is better than anyone’s on the current D corps. Whether that means he gets to stay on the third pair once Pelech is back remains to be seen but for now, he’s the sixth-best defenseman in the group.
Dennis Cholowski has improved since he got into the lineup and Grant Hutton has his moments. But a George-Scott Mayfield third pair might just work on a defense that has shown really well so far, despite all the blown leads.
• The power play: Less said the better. That’s a group that needs Barzal and Duclair back.
• The Islanders do lead the league in one stat: Faceoffs, where they’ve won 56.3 percent of their draws. Faceoffs are important at certain times, but not all the time. To best illustrate that, the Islanders are leading the league in short-handed faceoff percentage (59.1) and have the 31st-ranked penalty kill.
• Noah Dobson isn’t making many bank-breaking moves with his play in a contract year but he has been better at five-on-five. If you’re talking five-on-six, though, maybe best to say little. That goes for the whole team but Dobson in particular has struggled making quick decisions in tight around his net when the opposing team pulls its goalie.
• Among the veteran defensemen, Ryan Pulock has been solid and steady, proving a good partner for George. Mayfield has been less so and his return after missing nearly half of last season has not brought up the PK. Pelech, with yet another freak injury — a broken jaw this year adds to last year’s broken wrist and previous seasons with a torn Achilles’ tendon and thoracic outlet syndrome — is still TBD on his effectiveness this season.
• Bizarre stat No. 4: Despite all these failures and breakdowns and blown situations, the Islanders enter Wednesday a couple of points out of the playoffs. The debate will rage on between the “stay the course” and “blow it up” crowds; what makes this season already so strange is that both sides have a decent case.
(Top photo: Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
