Islanders try to solve power play woes by revamping units for game vs. Bruins

Patrick Roy chortled.

Sitting in front of the dais in the small anteroom just a few feet off the practice rink at Northwell Health Ice Center Wednesday morning, the Islanders coach was asked his reasoning for the changes he and his assistant coaches made to the two power play units.

The answer to this particular question was self-evident.

“I had no choice,” Roy said following the morning skate ahead of the Thanksgiving Eve match against Boston at UBS Arena.

The Islanders entered the game with the NHL’s second-worst power play (a 12.7% conversion rate), and have only scored four times in 32 man-up opportunities in the month of November. Over the course of the season, the Islanders have scored just eight times in 63 power plays.

“We got to try something different, right?” Bo Horvat said. “Obviously, when your power play is at the bottom of the league, something has to change.”

And so, changes were made.

During the half-hour skate Roy debuted two completely new units. The first group was comprised of Dennis Cholowski, Kyle Palmieri, Brock Nelson, Bo Horvat, and Maxim Tsyplakov while the quintet of Ryan Pulock, Noah Dobson, Simon Holmstrom, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, and Anders Lee made up the second unit.

Previously, Dobson, Oliver Wahlstrom, Pageau, Horvat, and Lee made up the first power play unit and Cholowski, Palmieri, Holmstrom, Nelson, and Tsyplakov were on the second grouping.

“It was in the back of our heads for awhile,” Roy said. “I think it was time for us to try something different. …Sometimes you have to try different things. [As an] example, Noah has been used to being on the top [of the first power play unit] and right now we’ll put him on the flank [of the second power play unit]. He’s got so much skill and talent so he could make plays and drive [to the] back net. He could create a lot of offense by doing this on the other unit.”

All of which is logical.

As was his reasoning for dropping Wahlstrom from the man-up squadrons, albeit with a colorful analogy.

“I’ll say this: I look at the menu and there’s a lot of [expletive] on it,” Roy said after a sigh. “It’s beautiful. ...I want to feel full. I like to see a little more. And I think he can do it. If I’m off-line, I’ll be off-line. But I do believe Wally could offer a little more.”

Wahlstrom, whom the Islanders used the 11th overall pick in the 2018 draft on due to the hard, heavy shot he possesses, is averaging 1.83 shots per game and only has two points (one goal and one assists) in 33 games this season.

The eye test matches the data in Wahlstrom’s case. But, interestingly enough, it does not in the Islanders’ case. Because, as per NaturalStatTrick.com, their 92.86 high-danger chances percentage at five-on-four is third-best in the NHL. Moreover, the Islanders rank fifth in the league with a 92.59 % scoring chances for and seventh in expected goals for with 92.15 % mark at five-on-four.

To summarize: The Islanders are generating a great deal of scoring chances on the man advantage, but the puck is not finding its way into the back of the net.

“It’s about getting pucks to the net and finding second opportunities,” Palmieri said. “For all the pretty power plays there are — that are in the top five, top 10 — a lot of the goals are still rebounds and broken plays and things like that. So it doesn’t have to be picture perfect.”

Instead, as Roy and his players stressed, it is just a matter of finishing power plays with goals. As such, the Hall-of-Famer believes his team has deserved better results than what it's received in the 22 contests prior to the game against the league’s worst power play (the Bruins have a 12.4% conversion rate).

“We’d like to have the results from what we’ve been doing. We feel like we’ve been playing good hockey,” Roy said. “Sometimes we focus on the result instead of focusing on the process, and that’s what we want to make sure we do better: Focusing on the process.”

Notes: The Islanders and UBS Arena distributed 200 Thanksgiving dinners to families in need prior to the game. The team said in a statement that “the families were sourced from non-profit agencies,” and that the “Islanders, and UBS staff and the players’ wives volunteered in the distribution.”