Patrick Roy knows a lot about coaching in the NHL and playing goalie in the NHL. But the Hockey Hall of Famer admits he messed things up big time when it came to making a crucial decision with New York Islanders rookie goaltender Tristan Lennox and his NHL debut Thursday.
With workhorse No. 1 goalie Ilya Sorokin sidelined by a lower-body injury sustained Tuesday against the Nashville Predators, the Islanders turned to backup Marcus Hogberg to start against the New York Rangers on Thursday. They also called up Lennox from Bridgeport of the American Hockey League to serve as Hogberg’s backup.
This was already a suboptimal situation since the Islanders’ playoff hopes are on life support and Hogberg is their No. 3 goalie, one with 55 games of middling success at the NHL level. He’s been on Long Island most of the season because Sorokin’s solid veteran backup, Semyon Varlamov, is on LTIR with a lower-body injury.
Hogberg was absolutely blown up by the Rangers on Wednesday. He allowed four first-period goals, another in the second and one more in the third when Rangers forward Brett Berard beat him on a savable backhand shot to make it 6-1 at the 7:54 mark.
Roy pulled the 30-year-old and inserted Lennox into his first NHL game. That experiment lasted four minutes and 43 seconds before Roy switched back to Hogberg. Lennox faced only two shots, the second of which was zipped right between his pads by Berard at 12:37.
“After the sixth goal, I wanted to give a break to Marcus, mentally more than anything else,” Roy explained postgame. “And I put Lennox in. When I saw the first goal — it’s on me.
“Maybe I should have kept [Högberg in]. The kid didn’t have a chance to practice. I thought that was unfair to him, to put him out there like this. That’s why I put Marcus back in. Didn’t want to expose him and put him in a tough spot. The chances we were giving, they were two-on-ones and three-on-twos. I didn’t think it was fair for the first game.”
The Islanders’ shoddy defensive effort was on display all night with the Rangers getting odd-man rushes and open looks time and again. Perhaps Roy thought the Islanders would tighten things up in front of the rookie. That wasn’t the case.
Roy, a four-time Stanley Cup winner as a goalie with the Montreal Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche as well as the 2014 Jack Adams Award winner as NHL coach of the year with the Avalanche, said he owed Lennox an explanation for the quick hook.
“I’m sure he’s gonna understand the situation. It’s hard,” Roy said. “He played yesterday in Bridgeport (of the American Hockey League) and drove here and had the morning skate and put him in a situation like this. I’ll take responsibility for that. Might not have been my best decision.”
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‘It’s sort of embarrassing’ how Islanders pulled rookie goalie Tristan Lennox after less than 5 minutes in debut
There’s more to this backstory. First of all, Lennox probably shouldn’t have even been on Long Island. At best, he’s fifth, maybe sixth, on the organizational depth chart. That’s in part to the fact that he missed 14 months because of a serious knee injury, and only recently returned to action. He played four games with Bridgeport and had a 4.44 goals-against average and unsightly .832 save percentage before the recall.
Lennox wasn’t called up to play. He wasn’t ready for that — or certainly not ready for that situation, coming in cold in a game where his team is being run out of its own building. He’s a second-year pro who played 13 games in the ECHL last season before the knee injury. Then only four in the AHL this season.
As Roy said, probably not his best decision.
On the MSG postgame show, analyst Thomas Hickey, a former Islanders defenseman, was not happy with how Roy handled the rookie goalie.
“I don’t get it, and look, it rubs me the wrong way,” Hickey said before Roy explained why he removed Lennox after the Berard goal. “I really feel for him. That might be the only chance he gets to play in the NHL … it’s sort of embarrassing to the young guy.”
What was embarrassing for sure was the Islanders losing 9-2 to their archrivals with their playoff hopes dangling by a thread. The Islanders need to win out and the Montreal Canadiens — the second wild card in the Eastern Conference — must lose each of their remaining four games in regulation in order for the Isles to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the sixth time in seven seasons.
