Christian Arnold
The New York Islanders completed their Phase 3 training camp and arrived in Toronto on Sunday to prepare for the Florida Panthers in the Qualifying Round of the NHL’s postseason tournament. Monday will be the first day that the team hits the ice in Toronto with their selected “bubble” squad.
Here we go.
On Wednesday, the Islanders have their only exhibition game. The NHL schedulers had some fun and nearly all teams will face their greatest rival. The Islanders tune-up is against the hated New York Rangers at 8 p.m.
The best-of-five Qualifying Round against Florida begins on Aug. 1
With the schedule clear and challenges ahead, here are the three questions surrounding the Islanders as they “bubble up.”
Can the power play find a rhythm?
It’s no secret that the Islanders power play has been a sore point for the team this season. Yes, the 2019-20 regular season seems like it was ages ago, but the Islanders’ struggles on the man-advantage have been something that has gone on well beyond this year.
When the 2019-20 campaign paused on March 12, the Islanders’ power play was functioning at a 17.3 percent success rate, which had them ranked 24th in the league. To put that into perspective, of the team’s 168 power-play opportunities – the fewest among all 31 NHL clubs — in 68 games the Islanders converted on just 29 of them.
The Islanders spent a good amount of time in the week leading up to their departure for Toronto working on the power play. Several of the usual suspects worked on the man-advantage, including Mat Barzal, Anders Lee, Josh Bailey, and Anthony Beauvillier. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who the Islanders acquired at the trade deadline in February, also got some work.
Pageau’s five power-play goals this past season are the most among all Islander skaters and his presence will surely help. He’ll also be handy on the penalty kill as well.
Heading into Toronto there seems to be plenty of optimism around the team’s power play.
“The power play looks good,” Beauvillier said. “It’s going to be huge for us in the playoffs, (and) it’s going to win us games. (The power play) is going to hopefully not lose us games, but I thought we were moving the puck quick and just trying to get back to the rhythm. It’s not necessarily easy to get back on the power play and just move the puck quick and I thought we’ve done a really good job of moving the puck quickly and executing the plays, and putting the puck in the back of the net.”
What can a healthy Islanders roster accomplish?
One of the tougher questions to be asked about the 2019-20 New York Islanders is which team were they? If you remember, the Islanders went on a 17-game point streak early in the season, coupled with a 10-game winning streak that had plenty of fans dreaming of a Stanley Cup.
Then things took a turn… The Islanders suffered injuries to several key players in the second half of the season – most notably losing defenseman Adam Pelech to an Achilles tendon injury in January – and dropped from the top of the Metropolitan Division to outside a playoff spot.
Fast forward four months and the Islanders enter the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs a fully healthy team. Pelech is back. Casey Cizikas, who suffered a laceration to his leg from the skate of Ivan Provorov, is 100 percent healthy. Johnny Boychuk, who took a skate to the face nine days before the season paused, is healthy as well.
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The Islanders struggled to fill the holes left by Cizikas and Pelech, which forced the team to go out and acquire defenseman Andy Greene from New Jersey and Jean-Gabriel Pageau from Ottawa. Pelech’s loss exposed just how crucial the 25-year-old defenseman had become to the team’s blue line.
The Islanders went 10-13-7 after Pelech was lost to injury and they allowed 3.13 goals per game during that stretch, while only scoring 2.63 goals per game. Before that, they had been scoring 3.0 goals per game and allowing just 2.63 goals per game.
Cizikas’ injury, along with other injuries sprinkled around, forced head coach Barry Trotz to have to move guys around to compensate and put pressure on others to fill the gaps.
So were the injuries the Islanders’ primary cause to struggle? Now with depth up front and on the blue line, will the Islanders of October and November return? We’re about to find out.
Which Jordan Eberle will we see in the playoffs?
Jordan Eberle showed last year that he can be an impact player in the postseason for the New York Islanders. In eight playoff games, Eberle recorded nine points (four goals, five assists) and scored in each of the Isles’ four games against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round.
It was a massive effort for Eberle and helped catapult the Islanders past the favored Pens. It also helped Eberle push past the narrative that he couldn’t excel in the postseason after a rough playoff go around with Edmonton in 2017.
The hope is that Eberle can repeat that performance.
“Going into last year I really wanted to step it up, produce, do well,” Eberle said. “I was obviously in a situation playing with (Mat Barzal) and (Anders Lee). Playing on the power play I was put in a spot to succeed and I needed to play well for us to have a chance to win. … Having that in my back pocket of I guess more than anything proving the doubters wrong of how the first time around went. So the second time a little bit better and this year hopefully I can carry that into it.”
Eberle will get the chance again to play alongside Barzal and Lee in the postseason. The trio has been a mainstay since training camp opened earlier this month and they’ve stood out most days on the ice. It’s a positive sign, especially for Eberle who has had an up and down year.
He has gone long stretches without scoring — it wasn’t until Dec.2 that he scored his first goal of the season — and then other times where he’s seemed like he was turning the corner. When the season was paused Eberle had 10 points (six goals, four points) over the team’s last 10 games.
So which Eberle will be on display in Toronto?
