Articles in New York Islanders

from Adam Proteau of The Hockey News,

For each team, we’ll pick out one player, GM, coach or team owner to put on the hot seat as someone facing considerable pressure to put up excellent results this coming season or be relocated to their team’s doghouse. A second individual will go on the warm seat as someone who may not facing a firing or trade anytime soon but who the team has very high expectations for in 2023-24 and beyond. A third individual will be assigned to the cold seat, labeling them as highly likely to stay on their current team for a very long period.

ISLANDERS’ HOT SEAT: LANE LAMBERT, COACH

Lambert is entering his second season as Islanders coach. GM Lou Lamoriello has given him a lineup that isn't the most talented inside or outside their Metropolitan Division, so he’s got to find ways they can win. The Isles are capped out on the salary cap front, with a current payroll of $83.2 million in 2023-24, per PuckPedia. Lamoriello is famous for quickly replacing his coaches, and if the Islanders wobble and disappoint, Lambert is going to be under a massive microscope and have his tactics questioned.

The Isles went 42-31-9 last season and just barely squeaked into the final wild-card berth, earning it by only two standings points over the Metro's fifth-placed Pittsburgh Penguins. That’s where we expect they’ll be in 2023-24 – only this time, it could be the Islanders on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. If that’s how it goes for the Isles, Lambert could get the chop from Lamoriello. Most of their lineup is locked in for the long term, and it’s always much easier to change direction by taking out the coach instead of the players.

Coaching is a cutthroat business, and Lambert is well aware of the extremely high stakes he’s dealing with this season. To keep his job safe, Lambert has to deliver at least another Stanley Cup playoff appearance – and once he’s there, he must guide them far past the first round. Lamoriello’s itchy trigger finger when it comes to coaches should always give Lambert pause to appreciate his current surroundings. It could all end relatively quickly for him if his team underachieves.

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from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

If the Islanders wish to add a big name who can fill a hole of a 30-goal scorer before the season begins, there is still one option left: Vladimir Tarasenko....

As currently constructed, the Islanders are in essence zeroed out, in need of clearing space just to bring back Oliver Wahlstrom and Zach Parise, if the latter decides to return.

Adding Tarasenko — who The Post reported was unhappy with offers ranging from $5.5 million-$6 million at the onset of free agency — would require maneuvering that is not at all simple in a flat-cap league.

Jean-Gabriel Pageau remains the most logical candidate to be on the move if such a thing were to come to fruition.

Moving the 30-year-old would take $5 million off the Islanders’ books without creating a major hole, since Mathew Barzal could be moved back to center.

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from Kevin Kurz of The Athletic,

Put another way, the 2023-24 Islanders’ identity will almost certainly be similar to what it was in the second half of last season, and other seasons past, as they continue to attempt to defy where the league seems to be going. That is, an elite goalie tandem, strong penalty killing, physical play and structured defense, all in the name of grinding out low-scoring affairs.

Not that any of this should be overly surprising. There are decades worth of evidence that points to how Lamoriello prefers to build his teams, along with the fact that he doesn’t have many options to make big changes anyway due to the Islanders’ salary cap situation and the plethora of limited and full no-trade clauses.

What makes it notable, though, is that there was a distinct attempt less than a year ago with the installation of Lane Lambert as head coach to make some alteration to the Islanders’ style that would, in theory, help them go punch-for-punch with the increasingly high-powered offenses that other teams employ, or at least are attempting to employ. Lambert and some players in the dressing room seemed genuinely excited to play a more up-tempo style in which the defensemen would be more aggressive in keeping plays alive, while the forwards would have a little more freedom to try and create offense.

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A little over 3 minutes to watch.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

For whatever reason, there is an undercurrent of resignation to Peter Laviolette’s inclusion in the discussion of who will be the Rangers’ next coach, as if he is there by dint of his availability on the job market instead of due to his accomplishments over two decades as an NHL coach.

Maybe that is to be expected after the Capitals mutually parted ways with Laviolette following a 35-37-10 record this past season, which put an end to a playoff streak that had begun in 2015 and marked just the second time since 2007 that the tournament was conducted without Washington.

The body of work for Laviolette, though, includes a Stanley Cup championship with the 2006 Hurricanes and appearances in the Cup final with the 2010 Flyers and 2017 Predators....

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t be a strong candidate,” Mike Milbury, the general manager who first hired Laviolette on Long Island, told The Post by phone Friday. “I know sometimes people want to shake it up with a radical approach and hire younger guys, college guys, but if you want an experienced guy who knows how to handle the bench and knows how to handle the locker room — key elements of being a successful coach — I think he’d be a strong candidate for any openings that are existing in the league today.”

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from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

As the Islanders skated off the UBS Arena ice on Friday, handshake lines finished and last vestiges of the crowd clearing out, the reality in front of them was clear as day.

They had lost a winnable Game 6, 2-1 to the Hurricanes on home ice with Paul Stastny ending their season in overtime.

They had lost a winnable series, blowing leads in both Game 2 and Game 6 that will haunt them for the entire offseason.

And they might have lost their best chance of an extended playoff run with this core of players.

“One-goal leads in the playoffs are just not safe,” Mathew Barzal said in a dead-quiet locker room, repeating a mantra the Islanders learned in the first round to their chagrin.

As the puck dropped on the third period Friday, the Islanders held a 1-0 lead that belied their near-complete control of proceedings.

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Carolina advances to round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs by defeating the New York Islanders 2-1 in OT tonight.

Below watch the game winner and the handshakes lus the game highlights.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

The language used by Mathew Barzal was too specific to be a coincidence.

Asked about Ilya Sorokin following the Islanders’ season-extending 3-2 win over the Hurricanes on Tuesday, Barzal used the Hart Trophy’s criteria to describe the Islanders’ goaltender.

“He’s special,” Barzal said. “He really is. He’s been our backbone all year. You look at the most important players in the league to their teams, I think he’s in the top three or five players in the league.”

If that wasn’t clear before Tuesday, it is now after Sorokin keyed the Islanders with 34 saves to stave off elimination against the Hurricanes, sending both teams back to Elmont for Game 6 on Friday and making sure the Islanders’ season lasts at least a few more days.

It is Sorokin — of course it is Sorokin — who deserves much of the credit for this one, finally leaving his imprint on the series from start to finish on a night when the Islanders may not have had their best, but the goaltender rendered that detail moot.

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Game highlights are below.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

The Islanders, so nearly, returned to New York with home-ice advantage and momentum in the series.

Instead, they got on a plane back to Long Island searching for answers after a gut-punch 4-3 overtime loss featuring a blown third-period lead, a pair of uncharacteristic goals let in by Ilya Sorokin and a Jesper Fast game-winner packed with controversy, with what seemed to be a Jordan Martinook high stick on Scott Mayfield that went uncalled in the lead-up to the goal.

The first playoff game at UBS Arena on Friday night is now an absolute must-win for the Islanders, who need to find an answer for Carolina’s speed advantage and ensure that this loss is not the backbreaker to their season.

“We just gotta find a way to score that extra goal,” Noah Dobson said. “We had lots of opportunities. It didn’t pan out for us tonight. Just gotta get ready for Game 3, regroup.”

It looked as though the Islanders would leave PNC Arena with a win after Brock Nelson gave them their first lead of the series 9:18 into the third period, burying a wrist shot off the rush.

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Snapshot of the wild card race in the East is below.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

One-hundred-and-twenty minutes are left in this Islanders season, which has been most characterized by teetering, and their playoff aspirations are still hanging on the ever-so-tight thread of their own play.

Teeter those aspirations did on Saturday, when the Islanders temporarily dipped below the cutline after the Penguins beat the Red Wings in the afternoon.

They jumped back into a playoff spot with their 4-0 victory Saturday night over the Flyers, the result of which was without doubt by the second intermission.

That left the third period for scoreboard watching, which did yield some drama when Matthew Tkachuk scored a late winner to haul the Panthers past the Capitals.

That brought a particularly inconvenient Florida winning streak to six games and kept the Panthers ahead of the Islanders for the first wild-card spot.

“That sucks,” Noah Dobson said after he was informed of Florida’s victory in the Islanders’ locker room. “But no, we know what situation we’re in. At the end of the day, you want to have control in your own hands, and we [have] that. … If we keep winning, we’re gonna be in a good spot.”

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from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

With each passing game, the playoffs are looking more and more like an inevitability for the Islanders.

After Kyle Palmieri’s shootout goal propelled the Isles to a 2-1 win over the Capitals on Wednesday, the Isles have two more points on the board, just seven games left and a six-point lead to work with.

That is a math problem that is becoming just about impossible for the Panthers — the first team below the cutline — to solve, even with their win over Toronto on Wednesday.

And the Isles look to have the upper hand over the Penguins as well, with Pittsburgh needing to make up five points with two games in hand to catch them for the first wild-card spot.

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Brilliant!

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

The Islanders have mastered the ability to turn a game on its head when it matters most: the third period.

In those final 20 minutes, they will scratch and claw and exhaust the opposition.

That is where they have thrived, outscoring opponents 17-1 in their last 10 third periods, a stretch in which the season itself has gone from a near write-off to a joyride that looks playoff-bound.

Believe Casey Cizikas when he says the Islanders are not out of it until the final buzzer.

Believe Anders Lee when he talks about the Islanders’ self-belief, even after their abysmal first two periods such as they played Thursday at Pittsburgh.

Believe in the Islanders, who have parlayed their last 10 third periods into a 7-2-1 stretch, bringing their playoff odds north of 50 percent despite injuries to Mathew Barzal and Jean-Gabriel Pageau that have stretched their depth to its limit.

“We stick with our game,” Lee said following the 4-3 overtime win over the Penguins on Thursday. “We play the way that we have been and we did the last 20. We can rely on our forecheck, our guys can make plays, we can score goals. Down 3-1, not going to happen every night, but we believe in ourselves.”

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from Kevin Kurz of The Athletic,

In some respects, the Islanders’ loss to the Bruins on Saturday was relatively predictable. Even when healthy, they can’t really match up top to bottom with the best team in the league. When a handful of top-nine forwards are out, they are playing on just about 20 hours of rest, with travel, and all-world goalie Ilya Sorokin has the night off, well, it always had the chance to be ugly.

But, this ugly?

Even with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Josh Bailey ruled out before the game, and Mathew Barzal’s departure about six minutes into the first period, the game was still an embarrassing one from the visitor’s standpoint as they lost, 6-2, in a game that didn’t even feel that close. After all, they are still supposedly fighting for a playoff spot, were coming off of their biggest win of the season on Friday, and had their dads in the building. Instead of rising to the occasion amid difficult circumstances, not only were the Islanders outclassed in terms of talent, but they were also out-hustled and outworked from the drop of the puck, surrendering the first three goals in the first period and never making it even close to a competitive game.

The playoffs are still a conversation topic with this team only because the other teams around them seem to have just as many issues. But Saturday’s lopsided loss in Boston was the kind of performance that again suggests this team may never find a way to give consistent enough efforts to actually qualify, even if they do somehow beat the Penguins again on Monday night in Pittsburgh.

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Catch the highlights below.

from Neil Best of Newsday,

The fact that Horvat was up for signing an eight-year contract extension worth a reported $68 million said a lot about how the Islanders are viewed these days.

Yes, money talks. It always does. Horvat needed to know he was wanted where it counts most.

But he was under no obligation to stay beyond the end of this season and could have commanded similar money elsewhere.

He decided to stay, and immediately was paired with Mathew Barzal, another in-his-prime star who signed an eight-year deal worth $73.2 million that kicks in next season.

Both contracts are set to expire at the end of 2030-31.

So, to review, the Islanders’ top two skaters are a guy who decided to come and a guy who decided to stay.

For some franchises, that would not be a big deal.

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via the New York Islanders,

The New York Islanders have agreed to terms with forward Bo Horvat on an eight-year contract. He was acquired from the Vancouver Canucks on Monday, Jan. 30.

This past weekend, Horvat represented the Islanders at the 2023 NHL All-Star Weekend, along with forward Brock Nelson and goalie Ilya Sorokin.

Horvat, 27, is averaging over a point-per-game with 54 (31 goals and 23 assists) in 49 games with the Canucks this season, his ninth in the NHL. This season, Horvat is second in the NHL in face-offs taken (1,116), and is averaging a 56% win percentage.

from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

When he was traded Monday by the only National Hockey League team he has played for, Bo Horvat was starting a long-planned family holiday at Disney World before reporting for this weekend’s All-Star Game in Florida.

It was a chance, he told Sportsnet on Friday before leaving Vancouver, to unplug from the stress and craziness of a disastrous Canucks season that had the team’s 27-year-old captain swirling at the epicentre of trade rumours since it began.

Horvat and his wife, Holly, were having custom All-Star Game jean jackets made for their small children, Gunnar (2 ½) and Tulsa (9 months), with the Canucks logo on them.

“Keepsakes,” Bo explained.

The last of them, it turns out.

On Monday, Vancouver traded him to the New York Islanders for winger Anthony Beauvillier, centre-prospect Aatu Raty and a conditional first-round draft pick. When Horvat flies to New York on Sunday night, instead of turning west to practise with the Canucks in New Jersey, Horvat will head east to meet the Islanders on Long Island.

The Canucks checked all the boxes on their trade wish list: a solid, proven NHL player in Beauvillier who is two years younger than Horvat, an A-grade prospect in Raty who has already logged 12 NHL games this season and a first-rounder.

It is the biggest in-season trade for the organization since holdout Pavel Bure was sent to the Florida Panthers in 1999. That was five general managers ago for the Canucks. This is a massive transaction that will, one way or another, define the Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin era.

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from Amalie Benjamin of the NHL website,

Lou Lamoriello said he accepts responsibility for the New York Islanders' recent struggles and will continue to try to improve the team ahead of the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline on March 3.

"There's no excuses. Because it's on me, totally on me," the Islanders general manager said Wednesday. "That's my responsibility to make us the best we possibly can, to make whatever changes we can. That's not on the coaching staff, that's not on the players, and I take that responsibility. It's making it happen. There's a lot of reasons why sometimes you can and you can't, and those are decisions you have to make. But I take full responsibility for whatever changes are or are not made."

The Islanders (23-21-5) are on a five-game skid (0-3-2) heading into their game at the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; SN1, TVAS, MSGSN, ESPN+). They've lost nine of their past 10 games (1-6-3) after missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season coming off appearances in the 2020 Eastern Conference Final and 2021 Stanley Cup Semifinals. They are five points behind the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins for the two wild cards into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference, but there are two teams (Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers) between them and the Capitals and Penguins.

"I think that if we can make ourselves better, whether it had been yesterday or the day before or today or tomorrow, we will definitely do that," Lamoriello said.

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from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

Lane Lambert has spent the season trying to say as little as possible when in front of reporters. So when he criticized specific elements of the Islanders’ performance following Sunday night’s 4-1 loss to the Kraken, it perked up the ears.

“We weren’t clean on our breakouts,” Lambert said. “It starts there. You can’t play with speed if you don’t execute or exit your zone cleanly and we didn’t do that. Then, when we did have the puck in the neutral zone at times, we turned it over instead of getting it in deep and establishing our forecheck.”

The Islanders spent much of Monday’s practice at Rogers Arena working on breakouts. But more telling than the minutiae is that entering Game 39 of the season, the Islanders are still struggling to find consistency in how they play.

The Islanders won three games on the hop before venturing out West for a four-game trip, clinically suppressing shots and forechecking as they gave up just three goals across those victories. The Kraken game was so bad, though, with the Isles giving up more shots than they generated on the power play, that Lambert went to an option he emphatically shot down less than a week ago and changed the composition of his five-on-four units at practice.

“That was last week,” he said. “Things have changed for sure.”

It’s nearly the midpoint of Lambert’s first season in charge of the Islanders and this season will be judged almost entirely on whether the team makes the playoffs. At 21-15-2 entering Tuesday’s game against the Canucks, they’re on the wrong side of the cutline, albeit only due to the Penguins — who are tied with them at 44 points and have one fewer regulation win — owning a game in hand. All of five points separate the Islanders, in sixth place and barely out of the playoffs, from the second-place Devils.

For much of the season, the Islanders have played up to good competition, with most of their poor performances coming against worse opposition.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

This is the kind of showdown for which Hockey New York, New York hungers. It is the Rangers and Islanders competing for a playoff spot in a race that very well may go into the final week of the season.

But don’t blink when these two clubs hook up at the Garden on Thursday. Because this will mark the final meeting between the clubs this season under a broken NHL schedule matrix that minimizes intra-divisional matchups.

Three is all we get this season. Three installments of the Battle of New York. Count’ em: three, which means not one over the nearly four months remaining in the season after the Islanders had taken the first two meetings within two weeks bridging October and November.

But that’s not all (well). For when the Rangers play in New Jersey on Jan. 7, that will mark three-and-out for the 2022-23 Battle of the Hudson in a year in which these two teams are competing for a tournament berth.

The absurdity of the NHL schedule matrix knows no bounds.

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