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.

Anthony Beauvillier

The second line for the New York Islanders had a phenomenal regular season in 2019-20, performing quite well in the postseason too. And 23-year old Anthony Beauvillier took another big step in his career, learning how to create offense on his own, while also helping out on the defensive side of the puck.

In this shortened year, Beauvillier had 18 goals and a career-high 21 assists. Heading back to the calculator, in a full 82 games, we could have seen him score around 22 goals (which would have been a career-high). He seemed to be clicking with centerman Brock Nelson, who had a strong year of his own, and veteran assist machine Josh Bailey.

With speed, awareness, and strong finishing ability, he could do wonders alongside Barzal. They have had moments to play alongside each other throughout the last couple of years, but Head Coach Barry Trotz had elected to split these two 2015 Draft picks up.

This past season, the advance stats seem to be in favor of putting these pieces back together. Barzal’s Corsi For Percentage (CF%) without Beauvillier was 55.17. But with the French-Canadien, it jumped to over 63 percent, at 63.22. We saw this positive relationship become a trend across the board, even in SCGF%, not something we saw with Lee in that spot.

The problem with Beauvillier is that he is a streaky individual. We have seen it over his four years in the NHL, and it was magnified in this past postseason run. His numbers show nine goals, which was tied for first on the team with Nelson and five assists in 22 Playoff games.

But, if we look at his game breakdown, he was not a factor in 11 of those games, failing to record either a goal or an assist. Against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team needed him more than ever, but he scored one goal in the six-game series and picked up just one assist. Against the weak Florida Panthers, he was electric. When it came time for the Washinton Capitals series, he was nonexistent until Game 5. Against the Philadelphia Flyers, a series that went the distance to seven games, he recorded two goals and one assist.

The team needs him to be more consistent. No one is asking him to be a point per game player, but when he was not accumulating offensive points, there were times when you forgot he was even playing.

Now could playing alongside Barzal help with this? It sure can. The advanced statistics help his case that he can be more of a weapon for Barzal than Anders Lee. Beauvillier will be an RFA by season’s end, and with the 2021 Expansion Draft approaching, the time is now to see if he will be a perfect fit with Barzal.

Trying out the Young Guns

The team does not have an excessive amount of high-level prospects, but they have two players that could help the team this season. 20-year old Oliver Wahlstrom and 22-year old Kieffer Bellows are both players looking to take the next step. While a third-line role may be a better fit than playing top-line minutes for the up and comers, it may not be a bad idea to try either of them out alongside Barzal.

Starting with Wahlstrom, we saw him play in nine games at the NHL level this past season. Head Coach Barry Trotz did not see enough of a reason to keep him up, sending him down to the AHL in order to play more and work on his craft. After netting 10 goals and recording 12 assists in the AHL with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, Wahlstrom believed he might get a chance to at least travel with the team to the Canadian Bubbles. Unfortunately for him, that was not the case. Following the conclusion of the Islanders’ run, Wahlstrom decided that it was best to go to work on his game overseas as he was loaned to AIK, a team playing in Hockey Allsvenskan, a step down from the Swedish Hockey League.

With AIK, Wahlstrom got off to a hot start with two goals and two assists in five games. Unfortunately, an awkward collision with the boards in his sixth game has kept him out of the lineup, and he is still a couple of weeks away from returning.

Wahlstrom is uncontainable when he has the puck on his stick, with an ability to turn something out of nothing each shift for himself and his teammates. He also does an excellent job intercepting opposing passes, as he is very good at reading the plays in front of him.

Even though he could be a great fit alongside Barzal, he is a right-winger, and moving him to the left side, which he could probably do, is not a change the team wants to make at this time. Now he could take over in Eberle’s spot, which may happen in the coming years, but probably not right now.

When talking about Kieffer Bellows, he is a natural left-winger who saw a hot streak in the AHL lead to a glorious chance at the NHL level. After picking up an assist in his first NHL game and then two weird goals in his second NHL game against the Los Angeles Kings, Bellows seemed to be a reliable weapon. But over the next six games, he did nothing, leading to him being demoted.

A gifted scorer, Bellows is a one-dimensional player right now. In 52 games with Bridgeport, he scored 22 goals with nine assists. While plus/- is never a good thing to look at solely to define a player, he did have a plus/- of -16, an improvement on his -20 in 2018-19. Having a Coach like Barry Trotz at your disposal to fix defensive issues is excellent, but right now, he sits behind Wahlstrom on the depth chart.

Like I said earlier, the team could afford to part ways with Bellows if it meant bringing in someone, even if it is not as likely. Also, Barzal takes his fair share of penalties and turns the puck over at inopportune times. I much rather have a guy like Wahlstrom as a safety net to help out on defense.

Not to mention, we found out after the fact that Bellows had broken AHL policy when it came to banned substances, but the issue was handled internally:

Cracking the NHL roster at this year’s Training Camp is the top priority for both of these players. Third line roles, for now, seems like the best option for both lads, as it will be a fight to stay in the lineup each night. But anything is possible when you make the roster.

Anders Lee and Anthony Beauvillier are still better options as of now, however.