Here’s a fun game. See if you can guess which two teams these were last season (no prizes for surmising that one is the Islanders).
Team 1 ranked 22nd in expected goals rate last season, 29th in Fenwick and 29th in Corsi. By the sum of its shooting percentage and save percentage, otherwise known as PDO, it was the seventh-luckiest team in the league and it outscored its expected goals differential by 23 during the regular season. It ranked 12th in power-play conversion percentage and fourth in penalty-kill rate.
Team 2 ranked 24th in expected goals rate, 23rd in Fenwick and 25th in Corsi. By PDO, it was the fifth-luckiest team in the league and it outscored its expected goals differential by 24 during the regular season. It ranked fourth in power-play conversion percentage and seventh in penalty-kill rate.
Team 1: The Islanders — you guessed it! — who finished with 84 points and missed the playoffs.
Team 2: The Rangers, who finished with 110 points and made the Eastern Conference Final.
Lane Lambert is the news Islanders coach Getty Images
Yes, there is some cherry-picking going on there, but that is how thin the line can be between contender and not. So after the Islanders spent the summer bafflingly failing to address a forward group that struggled to put pucks in the net last season, saying they believe they can contend with their current core, maybe there is some logic behind it.
Still, the climb back to relevance will not be an easy one. The luster is off a group that made two straight runs to the NHL’s final four and Barry Trotz — the coach who got them there — is gone, replaced by career assistant Lane Lambert. General manager Lou Lamoriello stood by his team throughout the summer, then handed Mathew Barzal a mammoth nine-year, $73.2 million deal, but something will have to give if they fail to contend a second-straight season.
That is not news to anyone within the locker room, and the belief in themselves is readily apparent. The question is whether they can turn it into reality.
Offense
Mathew Barzal leading the Islanders’ goal-scoring attack. Getty Images
Easily the biggest question mark hanging over this team is its ability to score at five-on-five. Lambert wants to see more aggression than the Islanders had under Trotz and a (hopefully) fully healthy group would already be a leg up on last season, but the underlying reality remains the same: The Islanders ranked 22nd in both per-game scoring and expected goals rate in 2021-22, and they’re bringing back the entire top 12 in 2022-23.
Really, a better offensive season depends on at least one of Anthony Beauvillier, Kyle Palmieri, Oliver Wahlstrom or Kieffer Bellows becoming a reliable scorer, preferably on a line with Barzal. Of that foursome, Palmieri led the way with 15 goals last season and none had a shooting percentage more than 10 percent. Perhaps that means some regression to the mean is due. That, at least, would be the hope.
Defense
Alexander Romanov and Robin Salo replace Zdeno Chara and Andy Greene in the top six, bringing the average age down and making it a much more offensively capable group than we saw last season. Romanov, the team’s marquee acquisition by dint of being its only acquisition, should be a compelling partner for Noah Dobson following the latter’s breakout campaign — a smooth-skating, hard-hitting 22-year-old who the Islanders hope can develop into a mainstay.
A full year of Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock together after the pair spent much of last season apart following an early-season injury to Pulock should help, too. In 2020-21, when they played next to each other the entire season, the duo put up an otherworldly 59.84 expected goals rate. In sum, though, defense itself wasn’t much of an issue for the Islanders last season — their problems on the blue line came when they had the puck — and is unlikely to be this time around.
Goaltending
The intrigue here is in how much of a workload the Islanders are ready to give Ilya Sorokin, and what that might mean for Semyon Varlamov in the final year of his contract. In his second year in the league, Sorokin looked like a superstar in the making, posting a .925 save percentage and helping the Islanders stay in the fight on a nightly basis. If that is indeed what he’s capable of, then he and Varlamov will form one of the best goaltending tandems in the league, but the latter’s $5 million salary would start to look like quite a hefty price tag.
Ilya Sorokin in net for the Islanders during a preseason matchup against the Devils on Sept. 27, 2022. Getty Images
Coaching
Through training camp, Lambert looked like a more animated figure than Trotz, under whom he worked as an assistant at three stops before being elevated to the head job ahead of this season. It’s unclear whether the changes in the Islanders’ system will end up being mostly subtle, but it does seem as though the team will be at least a little more offensively inclined under his tutelage. The evolution of Lambert in his first year in an NHL head job will be one of the most important through lines of the season.
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Most important offensive player: Palmieri had a bit of a rebound in the second half of last season, but a goals total in the mid-20s and a points total around 50 would be massive for the Islanders, particularly since he has skated alongside Barzal in the latter part of camp.
Most important defensive player(s): We’ll completely cheat here and say The Identity Line of Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck. The fourth line struggled badly last season, showing its age and failing to impact games the way it once had on the forecheck and in the defensive zone. They’re together again, and in a perfect world, it won’t prove to be their last stand.
Key rookie: Salo is the only rookie projected to be playing on a nightly basis, having missed the cutoff by four games last season, so it’s him. He’ll be getting third-pair minutes alongside Scott Mayfield and should have first crack at running the second power-play unit.
Key coaching decisions: Who plays alongside Barzal and what to do if his unit begins to struggle.
Prediction
It’s unfathomable for the Islanders not to be improved from last season, but the days of thinking this core can contend for a Stanley Cup are over until proven otherwise. The Isles will be back in the playoffs, but without a marquee addition at the deadline, it’s hard to see them going far.