The Islanders Are Moving On
They said it couldn’t be done.
Who said it? Well, just about everyone.
Let’s check in with Deadspin:
“A 2018–19 NHL Season Preview Of Every Team, From Best To Islanders”
That seems pretty certain. Sounds like they had no chance at making the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2018–2019. Is that really how everyone felt?
I’ll let Islanders TV Broadcast play by play announcer, Brendan Burke, tell you:
Well this is awkward. Not only did the Islanders not finish in the bottom five, not bow out of the race by January, not back into a Wild Card spot, they hosted a first round playoff series. The result of that Round 1 series? A four game sweep of the Pittsburgh Penguins, winners of the ‘15–’16 and ‘16–’17 Stanley Cup.
I’ll repeat that: a four game sweep of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you I saw this coming all along. I was numb on July 1st, when John Tavares slithered north. Admittedly, I was on a boat, in 100°, 100% humidity weather, with too many beers and too little food consumed, so the numbness might have been self-inflicted. My immediate, decidedly not sober, take was much like the “experts”. I was sure we would chase ping pong balls.
A funny thing happened, though. I remembered that the Islanders had hired the legendary Lou Lamoriello, and the freshly minted Cup champion coach, Barry Trotz, to run this team like adults (I’m looking at you, Garth Snow). I remembered that they were in year two of the ascent of Mat Barzal, The Kid Who Won the Calder. There were some summer acquisitions I liked (Robin Lehner, Valtteri Filppula), that balanced out the ones that confused me (Leo Komarov, Matt Martin). Once I settled down — and more importantly, drank some water — I looked at the team, considered their motivations, and honestly thought this team had a chance to make the playoffs. Not win a division. Not chase a Cup in earnest. Certainly not go from allowing the most goals in the league to the least. But I thought the Islanders would be playing meaningful games down the stretch as a bubble team.
Which leads us to what happened in the last seven days. I thought that the Islanders would win (you can hear that right here). What I, again, didn’t think would happen, was a dominant, wire-to-wire, sweep; I wasn’t alone. Consider the statistical model predicting the series outcome, from The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn:
Wow. A 29.7% chance to win. A 2% chance to sweep. To be fair to Dom, he preceded unveiling this model with a caveat, “All season my model has been perhaps unfairly low on the Islanders, a team that vindicated itself with the league’s fifth-best record. As luck would have it, they face a team that my model has always been very high on; they’ll have to show once again they deserve more respect than they’re being given.”
Well, they’ve certainly earned my respect along the way. They were a superb defensive team all season long, after years of defensive ineptitude. Call it “The Trotz Effect”, which is something I was incapable of fully appreciating until watching it on display every game. First led by a rejuvenated Johnny Boychuck and a refocused Nick Leddy, the defense corps gave rise to the long rumored young talent waiting in the wings, as an excellent pairing of Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock found their way. Those two went on to become the premiere pairing that Trotz deployed to slow Sidney Crosby — long the bane of the Islanders existence — and his top line. They did so to the tune of 1 single point for Crosby across the series, who assisted on the Penguins lone goal of Game 4. When Trotz couldn’t ice those two against Crosby, it often fell to Devon Toews (typically paired with Scott Mayfield, folk hero of Game 4), the rookie who finally broke in at the end of December, and forced them to keep him in ever since.
That dramatic defensive improvement made life much easier on goalie Robin Lehner, co-winner of the Jennings Trophy with his partner-in-crease, Thomas Greiss. The two were excellent all year, and their stories were even better: Greiss came back from a dreadful season the year before, and Robin Lehner came back from years of substance abuse and undiagnosed mental health issues, which he chronicled here. In this series, he proved that his .930 Save Percentage from the regular season wasn’t a fluke, posting a ridiculous .956 SV% in the four games. They say that all you need to go on a run in the playoffs is a team that’s clicking in front of a hot goalie. Hot seems an apt description of Lehner right now.
Last, but not least, the forwards took up the slack as best they could this season after Tavares’s departure. Again, Trotz worked magic on this unit, taking a team that seemed to have two 4th lines and no 1st lines, and giving them all structure and purpose. That continued into the post season, as the top 2 lines supplied the necessary offense, the reunited “Best 4th Line In Hockey” took a lot of the assignments against the Crosby line, and the 3rd line… well, they fill in the gaps and do whatever else they need to (Filppula and Komarov are relied on heavily on the PK). While the scoring had been down significantly for the Islanders this season, they did more than enough this series, led by the narrative busting Jordan Eberle, who has been oft maligned for his playoff struggles dating back to his tenure in Edmonton. Eberle (4G, 2A) scored a goal in every game of the series, his timing impeccable, as 2 of his goals were quick answers to the Penguins scoring to take the lead in Games 3 & 4.
The Islanders are moving on. Moving on from John Tavares. Moving on from the mockery and naysayers before (and during) the season. Moving on to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Where do they go from here? I can’t say. They could win next round, or fall flat on their faces. They could be this season’s version of last year’s Golden Knights, a scrappy team that no one expected, or wanted, to be here; they could go all the way to the Cup Final, before Cinderella turns back into a pumpkin at midnight. Maybe they shock the whole world and win it all (that’s not an official prediction).
The Islanders are moving on. Barry Trotz told this team at the beginning of the season, “If you want to go somewhere quick, go by yourself. If you want to go somewhere far, you have to go as a group.”
They’ve gone as a group so far.
That allowed them to go quick past the Penguins.
Read more from Alessandro here at The Spinchoon, or listen to Flix & a SixorThe Spinchoon Sports Show. Follow us on Twitter @SpinchoonSports,@TheSpinchoon, and @AlessandroB1187
