Islanders have a long, tough road to travel to make the playoffs
Head coach Patrick Roy of the Islanders looks on before the start of a game against the Buffalo Sabres at UBS Arena on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The reality of the situation was not lost on Bo Horvat.
A humiliating 7-1 loss to an NHL draft lottery-bound Sabres squad on Monday night at UBS Arena dropped the Islanders into last place in the Metropolitan Division and 13th place in the Eastern Conference. (They are tied with the Rangers in points but have a tiebreaker disadvantage and have played one more game.)
And with 47 games remaining in their 2024-25 season, the runway is shrinking.
“We got a lot of work ahead of us,” Horvat said after the loss. “It’s not going to be an easy run. It’s not going to be an easy road to get back to where we want to get, but we have no one to blame but ourselves. We put ourselves in this situation, obviously. It wasn’t good tonight.”
When they reconvene at Northwell Health Ice Center for practice Friday morning after the NHL’s three-game holiday pause, the tasks awaiting the Islanders are major in nature if they are to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the third straight year and 30th time in franchise history.
That begins with making up ground in the Eastern Conference playoff race. The Islanders are 16 points behind New Jersey for first in the Metropolitan Division (49-33). They are 15 points behind Washington for second (48-33) and 10 points behind third-place Carolina (43-33). Moreover, they trail Tampa Bay by seven points (40-33) and Ottawa by five points (38-33) for the first and second wild cards.
In the NHL’s nine full wild-card seasons — the NHL reconfigured its playoff criteria during the COVID-19-shortened 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons — the teams that claimed the Eastern Conference’s two wild-card berths averaged 98.6 and 95.5 points. Using those numbers as a baseline, the Islanders would need to earn between 62 and 65 points in 47 games.
Essentially, they would have to average 1.31 to 1.38 points per game. Currently, they are averaging 0.94 points per game.
One of the reasons the Islanders average less than a point a game is that they have not had a winning streak of longer than two games this season.
So what needs to change?
“It comes with a mindset in here,” Horvat said. “It’s on us as players to come to work every single night and make a difference and be consistent. We’re just not consistent enough in our game, and that’s a reflection on us in this room.”
Developing a home-ice advantage would be a useful place to start. The Islanders are 6-8-2 (14 points) at UBS Arena.
During his postgame news conference, coach Patrick Roy pointed at their shot totals and attempted shot totals as positives, but it also should be noted that the Islanders had 30 shots blocked by the Sabres and had 23 giveaways.
“There was no good way to put how that game went. We were garbage from the get-go,” Anders Lee said. “Our mistakes. We just turned the puck over too many times tonight. Turned the puck over and lost battles, and this is just not a good recipe.”
Their long road begins Saturday night at UBS Arena when they host the Penguins.
