Islanders' start to season: Some good, some not so good
Islanders left wing Matt Martin sets before a face-off against the Red Wings in the first period of an NHL game at UBS Arena on Monday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Islanders ended October with 10 points through their first eight games — six of them at home over the first 10% of their schedule — which puts them on pace for a 102-point season. That clip should be good enough to make the playoffs.
But there’s a tremendous distance between now and April and the Islanders have some improvements still to make as they start to play more road games. Nine of their 14 games in November are away from UBS Arena, starting with Thursday night’s match against the Capitals in Washington.
“We definitely left some points out there, there’s no question about it,” Matt Martin said of the 4-2-2 start, which ended with Monday night’s 4-3 overtime loss to the visiting Red Wings after the Islanders could not hold a two-goal lead in the third period. “But, at the same time, we saw that this was maybe one of our better starts since the [Barry] Trotz era.”
The Islanders matched the 10 points they earned in nine October games last season, their first under coach Lane Lambert. They wound up qualifying for a wild-card spot in their last game.
Their best first month in four seasons under Trotz was an 8-3-0 start in 2019-20, when the Islanders reached the NHL semifinals in the COVID-19 interrupted season.
“I feel like it was pretty solid,” Mathew Barzal said of the Islanders’ October. “The New Jersey game, we took them to overtime [a 5-4 loss on Oct. 20 at UBS Arena]. That’s a good team. [Monday] night, Detroit’s playing pretty good hockey. We grabbed a point, probably should have had two. If you told us through the first eight games of the year this would be our record, we’d probably take it.”
Among the good: Goalies Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov each have a shutout; center Brock Nelson (four goals, one assist), linemate Kyle Palmieri (three goals, four assists) and defenseman Noah Dobson (two goals, seven assists) have all gotten off to impressive starts.
In the needs-improvement category: The Islanders’ power play has started 4-for-25 (16.0%) and while the zone entries have improved, there still needs to be more production; the Islanders are giving up an average of 34.8 shots per game, the fourth highest in the NHL.
And they need to beat one of the NHL’s better teams. Three of their losses came to teams with more points than them.
Notes & quotes: Lambert has removed Barzal from Bo Horvat’s top line with Anders Lee in favor of Oliver Wahlstrom in the last two contests and cited defensive concerns against the Red Wings. “When I went back and looked at it, it wasn’t maybe as bad as I thought it was,” Lambert said on Tuesday. “But we don’t want to be giving up Grade-A chances and we don’t want to be trading chances.” Barzal was on the ice with Horvat and Lee for 8:16 at five-on-five, per NaturalStatTrick.com, and the trio was outchanced 14-12 . . . Defenseman Scott Mayfield (lower body), who has missed seven games, skated with teammates for a second straight day.
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.
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