New York Islanders: The best internal options to play alongside Mathew Barzal
We have yet to see how good Mathew Barzal will be for this New York Islanders hockey club.
The sky is truly is the limit, and at only 23-years-old, Mathew Barzal is the New York Islander’s most prized possession.
Barzal is not technically back in the blue and white sweater, as General Manager Lou Lamoriello is working tirelessly to clear space for his star in the making. With $3.9 million in cap space to spend right now, I have already discussed how acquiring an elite winger, which was rumored early on in Free Agency, seems more of a myth.
It could happen through a trade, but the Islanders may not be inclined to move assets for a guy that is owed $7.5 million this season. The Winnipeg Jets have been taking calls on their elite winger, 22-year old Patrick Laine. The Islanders would need to offer up at least one of their top prospects in a Kieffer Bellows, and maybe even another prospect, along with one or both of the Second Round picks acquired in the Devon Toews trade.
It just would not make sense financially, even though Laine, alongside Barzal, would be a dominant duo.
Someone I have been very high on is UFA Mike Hoffman, a consistent sniper throughout his career. With defense not being his strong-suit, Head Coach Barry Trotz helped the best scorer in the game in Alex Ovechkin become a respectable player in his own zone. Hoffman, however, may not be the right fit for this group.
The good news is that Hoffman and his agent stated he would be open to taking a one-year deal. The bad news, however, is the Islanders have no money.
So let’s be realistic. The cheapest option for the Islanders is finding someone internally.
Let’s delve in and take a look at some of the options…
Anders Lee
In a piece I wrote last week, I made it clear that captain Anders Lee may be best suited on the third line. I stand by my statements I made, one being that if the team were to acquire a winger, Lee would be the odd man out on the top line. But, if the team cannot get a weapon, Lee still does a strong job alongside Barzal.
This past season Lee only put up 20 goals, but that was in a 68 game regular season in which he recorded 43 points. So let’s do some math. If the NHL continued with the regular season, we can project that he would have scored 24 goals, with around 52 points.
Barzal’s 2019-20 season was not as dynamic as his rookie year in 2017-18 when he scored 22 goals and recorded 85 points. But the young centerman was on pace to potentially set a new career-high in goals, as his 19 over 68 translates to 23 goals in an 82-game season. Although he put up an astonishing 63 assists in his Calder Trophy-winning season, he was on pace for 50 assists this past year, equaling out to a phenomenal 73-point campaign.
With help from my pals at Naural Stat Trick, we can take a deeper dive into Lee’s effect on Barzal’s offensive output. I will not discuss all of the advanced stats, but the one that stands out to me as the most important is Scoring Chances For Percentage (SCF%) and Scoring Chances Goals For Percentage (SCGF%). When Lee was on the ice with Barzal, Barzal had a 59.32 SCF%, but he saw that drop to 51.79% without him. Now we know, as evident in the Playoffs with Jordan Eberle seemingly failing to finish scoring chances, that converting is where it truly matters. Barzal executed less, going from a SCGF% of 57.50 when Lee was on the ice to 62.96 when he was not.
Looking at Eberle, who I mentioned previously has solid chemistry with Barzal, Barzal’s SCF% dropped from 62.08 to 51.60 when not on the ice with Eberle, an 11 point drop off. However, in regards to SCGF%, the number changed ever so slightly.
What do we take from this? Of course, anything above 50-percent is strong, as Lee still did his job with the bright young Long Island phenom.
It also shows that Lee is not the only one responsible for Barzal’s success, but he does play an integral role. Leadership and mentoring are critical to Barzal’s career, something immeasurable by statistics.