The New York Islanders are off to a good start to the year

The New York Islanders are off to a solid 5-2-3 start to the season, with their latest win being a 3-0 shutout against the Capitals Thursday night. Semyon Varlamov saved all 32 shots he faced, keeping his and Ilya Sorokin’s stats as a tandem very high.

When thinking about the Islanders from a hockey fan outside of New York, the Islanders don’t have a true offensive gamebreaker on their team.

It got me thinking, what do the Islanders have that other teams with no offensive gamebreakers don’t? These are the two biggest reasons why:

The Islanders have an elite goalie tandem.

As mentioned above, Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov are an elite goalie tandem. According to the list on moneypuck.com, both Sorokin and Varlamov are top 50 in the league when looking at goals saved above expected.

When you don’t score a lot of goals, it is important to have elite goaltending and defense, and that is what the Islanders have had.

It’s quite impressive watching the Islanders win the way they do with goal suppression and elite goaltending, especially in today’s NHL where scoring is reaching new levels. It just shows how great the sport of hockey is with its multiple ways to win a game.

The New York Islanders are a well-put-together NHL team right now.

Lou Lamoriello knows how to evaluate talent.

Every NHL offseason, it always seems like Lou signs a player to a contract that we fans look at and say, “What is he thinking?”.

Or in the case of the last few off-season’s, the Islanders have been fairly quiet in free agency when it seemed like they could have made moves that they didn’t.

While this criticism of Lou seems to surface right before every new NHL season, the truth is that the Islanders have been a successful franchise recently.

The Islanders missed the playoffs just one time since 2018. This success of the Islanders is in part because of Lou’s dedication to what Islanders hockey is and not shying away from it.

The next time you hear an Islanders or hockey fan say New York can’t score, point out to them the success of the franchise in the last 5 years, and bring up their elite goaltending and superb player selection by the GM.

On Saturday night, the Carolina Hurricanes (who are one of the best teams in the NHL), beat them in overtime but they earned a point and it was a very respectable game for New York.