Hockey Talk

Islanders Rough Start

Mat Barzal and the New York Islanders are currently sitting last in the Metropolitan division with a record of 5-6-2 and 12 points. So what has this strong Stanly Cup Competitor off to a rough start? 

The  answer could be the fact that the Islanders just finished their 13 game road streak. UBS Arena is set to hold the first game on Saturday, November 20th. We all know that home ice advantage is a real thing. But does it make enough of a difference to allow the losses to keep piling up like this. 

Can we look to blame it on the competitors. Let's see who the Islanders have both won against, and lost to. New York has beat, Chicago, Arizona, Vegas, Montreal, and Winnipeg. I personally can understand the win against a team like Arizona who has been sitting at least place in the league with only two wins. They have lost to, Carolina, Florida, Columbus (OT), Nashville (SO), Minnesota, New Jersey, Tampa Bay, and Florida again. Teams such as Florida and Carolina,  I can understand a loss as those are two powerhouse teams that are currently dominating in the league.  In these games the Isles are failing to score many goals, hardly any.

Which brings me into my next point, is this team just not producing enough? Enough energy? Enough points? Some of their leading scorers are lacking in points early on this season. Most notably Mat Barzal. Barzal's stats look like this:  4 goals, and 4 assists in 13 games. Of those 13 games three of the losses they scored 1 goal. They were shutout against New Jersey. 6 games they scored only 2 goals and 2 of those resulted in wins. I'm not saying that they need to be scoring 4,5,6, goals a game but maybe scoring only 2 is not enough. 

Maybe the offseason changes are effecting them too much. They lost top liner Jordan Eberle to the Seattle Kraken. They traded Nick Leddy to the Detroit Red Wings. There was the addition of veteran forward, Zach Parise. The changes to the team have been nothing huge, the biggest loss having been Eberle. The dynamic goaltending duo of Varlamov and Sorokin still remains. And to fill the top line spot alongside Anders Lee and Barzal has most notably been Kyle Palmieri. 

My thought to the statements above is this: they are not playing simple hockey the way they know how. A small portion of it may be the settling into changes made to the roster and the road game streak. But at the end of the day it is a lack in production. 

At the end of the day the Isles need to stop allowing their opponents to have control of the puck through the majority of the game. The D needs to be tough on pucks and stop allowing opportunities through the slot. The simple things is what this team needs to focus on, getting down and getting it down right. If the simple fundamental parts of the game are done right, I don't see why the Islanders can't get back on track to being the two year semi final playoff team they have been.