Could the Islanders be the next surprising turn around team in the NHL?
The New York Islanders missed out on the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2022, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can count them out already for 2023. The Islanders said goodbye to head coach Barry Trotz at the end of the 2021-22 NHL season and with that change comes a fresh voice in the locker room.
Lane Lambert is the new coach of the New York Islanders as picked by Lou Lamoriello general manager of the team. This roster is just a year removed from taking the Tampa Bay Lightning to seven games in the Conference Final in 2021.
Their seasons in 2020 and 2021 both ended against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Conference Final, going that far against that good of a team definitely does mean something in the league. It might not have given the team a trophy, but it was a mark of a good team to get out of those first two rounds.
The Islanders missed out on the postseason in 2022, but they did have a really strong second half of the season after starting the year on a ridiculously long road trip and a long losing streak lasting pretty much the entire month of November.
The Islanders were not that strong at the start of the 2021-22 NHL season, but they were not a team that laid over and tanked after things got tough, they kept competing and finished the year with a record above 500 as the team went 37-35-10 on the year.
The Islanders will enter this season still with the same group intact pretty much. They still have Mathew Barzal and Brock Nelson leading things offensively. This team also has a strong blueline with guys like Pulock and Pelech and their goaltending with Ilya Sorokin in the net was pretty good with Sorokin putting up a .925 save percentage in 2021-22.
This Islanders team might be bad again next season, but they also might surprise people and bounce back to being the playoff team they were the three seasons in a row before they missed out on the postseason in 2022.
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Change is going to come in New York eventually as this core group ages, but considering this group is relatively still intact with a new head coach that has a fresh voice maybe this group can turn things around and sneak into the playoffs as a wild card team. Maybe a team like Boston or Washington will finally miss out on the playoffs thanks to the Islanders getting back into the postseason.