As the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs kick off Monday night, the New York Islanders will not be participating for the first time in four years.

After back-to-back trips to the Semi-Finals and the creation of their brand new home in Belmont Park, the New York Islanders did not live up to expectations. Due to internal and external factors, they were simply not good enough.

2021-22 was a prove-it year for the New York Islanders. In 2019-20, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the NHL to expand their postseason play and the Islanders snuck in due to point percentage. In 2020-21, the Islanders finished fourth in a new Mass Mutual East Division to get into the postseason, playing each team in their division eight times as they beat up on the weaker teams but struggled against the tough teams.

That’s not to take away from what the Islanders had to battle through in those regular seasons and the work the Islanders put in to get as far as they did in those postseasons.

The reason this past season was a prove-it year was due to the fact that it would be the first 82-game season in two years and was a chance for the Islanders to show that their recent successes were not just flukes in odd years.

Despite their finish, 16 points out of the second and final wild-card spot, we all know what transpired this year. To say the New York Islanders are more what they were this season than what they had shown previously would be an uneducated statement.

Are changes needed? For sure. Are the Islanders a bad hockey team? No.

At NYI Hockey Now, we will get into all that, as we got time.

But after the year the New York Islanders had, missing the playoffs is not the worst thing for this group.

Here’s why.

The New York Islanders have played a lot of hockey since the 2022 Winter Olympic br Due to COVID-19 postponements, the Islanders played their final 55 games over a 99-day span, which included 10 back-to-back situations, eight in each of the last eight weeks.

Even though the Islanders started to play better the more games they had (rhythm helps), you could see in their game that the number of games late began to take a toll––mentally and physically.