NOW AVAILABLE! New York Islanders: A to Z will introduce a new generation of fans to the legendary players, magical moments, and colorful 50-year history of the Islanders.
Contributions from Brendan Burke, Stan Fischler, Chris King, and Jiggs McDonald.
You can purchase it HERE
A portion of the proceeds goes to the Islanders Children’s Foundation.
Good Morning, Islanders Country.
What to make of Lane Lambert’s first season as an NHL head coach?
We’ll have a better, firmer answer to that question in six games, but to this point, one thing you can say is that the long-time Barry Trotz assistant has endured.
If there have been times when you listened to Lambert during a post-game media scrum or after a morning skate and felt that he was searching for the right words, it’s because he probably was. I don’t care how many NHL games you’ve been on the bench for or how much game film you’ve watched with a head coach, it’s just different when you are the guy and it is your team.
“There’s added stress to it, yeah. But, I mean, that’s what we sign up for,” Lambert said earlier in the season. “And along the way, you have to enjoy it as well.”
It’s easy for fans and pundits to pile on when decisions go wrong. There’s been room for criticism, and fair criticism at that. Lambert hasn’t been able to fix the power play, and his line combinations have been in a blender all season. But this has not been a season devoid of adversity - there’s been quite a bit of it. Adam Pelech missed significant time, as did Kyle Palmieri, Cal Clutterbuck, and JG Pageau. It’s hard to get into a rhythm as a team with so many moving parts and that certainly contributed to the team not finding their footing defensively as they tried to open things up for their skill players while maintaining structure.
When Mathew Barzal went out with an injury, the Islanders and Lambert had their excuse for not making the playoffs, but instead, it sparked a return to their defensive ways that have them being talked about as a dangerous playoff team that will be a tough out for any Eastern Conference opponent. If you’re going to blame Lambert for the slow starts, blown leads, and inconsistent efforts we’ve seen this season; you need to give him credit for the way the team stuck together long enough to play their best hockey of the season at the most opportune time.
It’s been an eventful year one, with his biggest challenge still ahead of him - getting this team into the postseason.
Coming up, Adam Pelech’s intangibles are irreplaceable, and Ilya Sorokin’s focus is unmatched. Plus, how Pierre Engvall has settled in, Kinger is caught on camera by his broadcast partner, Denis Potvin saying goodbye to the Nassau Coliseum faithful and how he almost took a swing at baseball.
Let’s dive in.
📰 NEWS: The Islanders didn’t get any help on Thursday night, as both the Pittsburgh Penguins and Florida Panthers were victorious. Pittsburgh blanked the Nashville Predators 2-0, while Florida won their second straight with a 5-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens. The site MoneyPuck had the Islanders’ playoff odds at 92.7% entering Thursday, but that number dropped to 88.5% this morning.
◾️ Beat writer Ethan Sears in the New York Post writes about how the Islanders hit their stride when Adam Pelech returned from injury. As Sears calls it, Pelech has irreplaceable intangibles. The team was 7-9-5 and reeling after Pelech went down with a concussion suffered on Dec. 6 against the St. Louis Blues, but his return solidified the blueline and allowed the Islanders to eventually settle into their defensive structure to turn their season around.
Per Natural Stat Trick, Pelech leads the Islanders in plus-minus and has a 51.6 expected goals percentage at five-on-five.
“Seems like he’s always solid and in a good position and with a good stick,” Brock Nelson told The Post. “He’s always breaking plays up. Something that the average person might not recognize, but if you hone in and kinda iso-cam, you’d probably appreciate his game a little bit more. Especially defensively, he’s always in the way, in lanes, good sticks, breaking up potential dangerous plays.”
While he previously excelled alongside Ryan Pulock as a shutdown pair, Pelech has been playing with Scott Mayfield while Pulcok’s presence next to Alexander Romanov has helped the 22-year-old defender take the next step in his career.
◾️ G Ilya Sorokin wrapped up a stellar March with a shootout win on Wednesday night, moving his record to 8-3-1 as he approaches 60 games played this season. The 27-year-old is third in the NHL in save percentage (.924) and fourth in goals against average (2.34) after starting 18 of the last 23 games and two straight.
In Newsday, Andrew Gross writes about Sorokin’s ability to focus on the task at hand and not allow for outside distractions. “I don’t know about structure,” Sorokin said when asked how the Islanders have tightened their game defensively. “[My teammates] do block shots and help me, and this is an important thing for me.”
◾️ In AMNY, Joe Pantorno writes how Pierre Engvall is fitting right in after an uneven start and proving to be one of the more consequential trade deadline acquisitions. Engvall has scored five goals and two assists in his last nine games, and his second-period goal in Washington was the team’s lone in regulation.
“The last few games here, I’ve been feeling good,” Engvall said. “I have to thank my teammates for taking care of me and helping me a lot on and off the ice…“I think we have good chemistry out there. We work hard, and we find each other out there, so it feels really good to play out there with them.
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders are off on Friday ahead of back-to-back games this weekend against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes.
📊 STANDINGS: Here are the latest Eastern Conference Wild Card standings as we head into weekend and April as the season hits its final stretch.
📹 Thanks to WRHU color analyst Greg Picker, we got to see the “Kinger Cam” on Wednesday night as radio play-by-play man Chris King called the Isles’ first shootout win of the season against the Washington Capitals.
📚 SOUND SMART: The Isles have outscored the opposition 30-9 over the last 19 third periods. The Isles' third-period differential improves to +20; they are +21 in the last 19 games. Pierre Engvall has five goals in the last nine games; he now has 47 career goals, the most of any active NHL player without a multi-goal game.
🗓 ISLES REWIND: On March 31, 1988, Islanders captain Denis Potvin played in his 542nd and final regular-season home game at Nassau Coliseum in a 7-3 win over the Washington Capitals that all but clinched the Patrick Division. Before the game, Potvin received two milestone awards for 1,000 points and 1,000 games played from N.H.L. president John Ziegler. As the last 90 seconds ticked down, the crowd chanted "Den-ny, Den-ny" in anticipation of the postgame celebration.
🔗 Breaking down Islanders’ best NHL playoff possibilities by Ethan Sears, New York Post “There is still the not-so-small matter of clinching, but with six games left in the regular season, it looks as though the Islanders will check the first box on their list of preseason goals and make the playoffs The next thing to worry about: who they’ll face in the first round.”
🔗 Islanders’ Kyle Palmieri Proving His Worth by Nick Rizzo, The Hockey Writers “Palmieri missed a significant amount of time this season with an upper-body injury. He returned in late January and has played his best hockey for the club, matching his goal total from last season already with 16. He has 10 points in his last six games, including the game-winner on Monday night (March 27) against his former team”
And we leave you with this…via Corey Wright at NewYorkIslanders.com, as an organization, the Islanders have a healthy baseball tradition, fielding a competitive softball team during the team's dynasty years. 🧢 ⚾️
Thanks for reading! Follow us on Twitter for regular updates until the next newsletter.
And please check out our newsletters about the Knicks and Mets, too.