Good Morning, Islanders Country.
The Barry Trotz/Lou Lamoriello era is four years old. The Islanders missed the playoffs eight of the previous 11 seasons. So unless you are in middle school, there’s nothing new about a Spring without playoff hockey. But after the last three seasons - three consecutive years of winning at least one playoff round (after 23 without winning any!) it will feel strange to not be part of the post-season.
“It’s really strange,” Barry Trotz said before Tuesday’s win. “We’ve (he and his coaching staff) been in the second round or deeper seven years and then the short offseasons. It’s all blended in. But it’s all worth it. It is feeling really strange, there’s no question.”
Feeling strange ins’t necessarily a bad thing. For the last couple of Springs, it felt strange watching the Islanders win playoff series! Now it feels strange that their season ends Friday. I prefer the former. Let’s get back to feeling that or maybe even stranger things, like winning the Stanley Cup.
Coming up, tickets are available for Islanders* playoff hockey and Sebastian Aho’s future is uncertain. Plus, there’s nothing quirky about UBS Arena, Ryan Pulock is shooting for another power-play goal, and the time we all went crazy for Shane Prince.
Let’s dive in.
📰 NEWS: The Bridgeport Islanders take on the Providence Bruins in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs starting on Monday, May 2nd. Game Two is back at Total Mortage Arena. You can get your tickets HERE.
◾️ In Newsday, Andrew Gross writes about the uncertain future of Sebastian Aho with the Islanders organization. The 2017 fifth-round pick will be a Group 6 unrestricted free agent as he’s older than 25, has played at least three professional seasons, and will not play the minimum 75 NHL games in that span.
Kevin Kurz in The Athletic dissects what went wrong for the worn-out Islanders this season. There are a lot of reasons behind it, the condensed, jammed pack schedule being one. But maybe it’s also real simple. They just weren’t good enough against playoff teams.
◾️WEREN’T GOOD ENOUGH: We’ve lost points when some of our plays have been more catastrophic or uncharacteristic of us,” said Barry Trotz. “And a lot of it is just individual decisions. It could be guys trying to do too much, guys not aware or being a little too loose. It’s a number of things.”
◾️ON FUMES: “We’re all tired,” said Trotz. “Our team is tired. We’re all sick. We’re on fumes. The schedule has chewed us up, and the guys are battling.”
◾️NO SCRIPT FOR IT: “It wasn’t an easy year for everybody — players, coaches, management, fans probably. Everybody,” Trotz added. “But there was no script for it. It was seat-of-your-pants almost on a nightly basis. That was a little more difficult. Obviously, we didn’t have the season that we envisioned or anybody envisioned.”
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders host the Washington Capitals at UBS Arena to wrap up their back-to-back. Face-off is set for 7:00 PM
📊 STANDINGS:
In The New York Post, Ethan Sears writes that UBS Arena, like the many shiny new buildings that have come before, is without the unexpected caroms and bounces that older buildings like the Nassau Coliseum would produce with some level of regularity. Now, you just expect the expected. UBS Arena is normal.
◾️BEWARE OF THE BOARDS: “Maybe say at the Coli, if you try to go indirect on a breakout pass or something like that off the boards, a lot of times the puck would bounce in the air and go down for an icing,” Adam Pelech said. “I guess if you know that, you’re trying to make direct passes and not really use the boards. Or the Zamboni door is behind the net and you know it’s gonna bounce off it weird, maybe you’re making a D-to-D pass, it’s direct rather than off the boards.”
◾️KNOW YOUR BOUNCES: “I think you know your own rink, you know your own bounces,” Barry Trotz said. “When the puck comes around by our door, when we were at the Coliseum, our wingers wouldn’t get their skates on the wall. They’d actually play a little more dot line, cause [the puck] didn’t always play true. They would learn that. Where an opposition [team] coming in here once, maybe twice a year, they probably wouldn’t know that.”
📚 SOUND SMART: Per Eric Hornick in The Skinny, Ryan Pulock and Noah Dobson are the first Islander defensemen to score a power-play goal in the same game since Lubomir Visnovsky and Johnny Boychuk did so, also against the Caps, on December 29, 2014. Pulock is the first 1st Islander defenseman with PP goals in consecutive games in 12 years (Mark Streit - 1/9-1/12/2010); he will look to tie the club record of 3 (last done by Adrian Aucoin in 2002) tonight.
🗓 ISLE REMEMBER: On April 27, 2016, Shane Prince scored twice during a three-goal first period and John Tavares had a goal and an assist to help the Islanders defeat Ben Bishop and the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-3 in Game 1 of the second-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
🔗 Islanders road game devolving in last four years by Michel Anderson, Eyes on Isles “I have to think the Islanders aging core isn't necessarily helping their road game. Chris Pronger had an interesting thread on Twitter about travel in the NHL. Specifically when he talks about the impacts of travel on a player's body. An impact that is only heightened by a player's age. For the oldest team in the NHL, that's clearly a problem.
📺 DECK HANDS: PROSPECT VIDEO with Michel Anderson “The 2021-22 season is essentially over around the world. So I thought this was a good time to look at growth in the Isles prospect pool based on position.”
And we leave you with this…Washington Capitals’ goaltender Vitek Vanacek “photo-bombing” Anson Carter and Shannon Hogan during Tuesday’s pre-game show
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