Islanders' Patrick Roy remains optimistic despite crushing losses
Patrick Roy is going to stay optimistic because he literally doesn’t know any other way.
That’s the crux of being a competitive professional athlete or, in Roy’s case, a former competitive professional athlete who now coaches them. You always have an extreme confidence in your ability and talent to make things better.
So, yes, Roy is disappointed his Islanders are below NHL .500 — a flawed standard anyway designed to mask a team’s true mediocrity — at 8-10-5 entering Friday afternoon’s road match against the Capitals.
But, no, Roy is not publicly wavering in his support after the Islanders ended a 1-2-0 homestand — the start of a crucial stretch of eight of 11 at UBS Arena — with Wednesday’s 6-3 loss to the Bruins in which they’re defensive miscues allowed the visitors to score all three third-period goals. This after the Islanders had lost four of their previous five games by failing to hold a lead in the third period despite playing well for stretches of each game.
Roy admitted that failing to get rewarded repeatedly could eventually affect the players in a negative way.
“Could be,” Roy said. “But, at the same time, what good is that going to do? Why not focus on the things that we’re doing well. It’s a long season. How many times last year we said, ‘Oh, the Islanders are not going to make the playoffs?’ We know we’ve got to find a way to stay close to that .500 mark when all the guys [the injured Mathew Barzal, Anthony Duclair, Adam Pelech and Mike Reilly] are going to be back. And that’s what we’re trying. But we [give] away some games that we could win. It is what it is.”
Thursday was a benchmark in the NHL season as, historically, approximately 77% of teams holding a playoff position on Thanksgiving go on to qualify for the postseason. The Islanders were three points out of the last wild-card spot in a weak Eastern Conference, but just two points ahead of the conference-worst Canadiens.
Last season, the Islanders were in second place in the Metropolitan Division on Thanksgiving under former coach Lane Lambert and had to put together an 8-0-1 finish under Roy to end in third place.
“That was a good hockey game,” captain Anders Lee said after the Islanders rallied from two goals down in the first period and a one-goal deficit in the second period before losing to the Bruins. “Not the start we wanted. I thought we battled back all night. We just weren’t able to re-tie it up in the third.”
But the Islanders — specifically Roy and president/general manager Lou Lamoriello — must carefully balance the needed optimism against not fooling oneself as to the potential of this group of players.
Roy perhaps cracked a window into his true thinking when he slipped in — intentionally or not — “It’s the team that Lou gave me,” when asked about his unflagging optimism.
That immediately led to another round of speculation as to whether Lamoriello and Roy are on the same page, something they both insisted they were earlier this season.
But if they’re not, and only time this season will bear that out, it will take more than optimism to fix what’s wrong.
Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.
