Depleted Islanders need special teams to step up
The Islanders’ comeback on Tuesday night started with a power-play goal.
And it succeeded in no small part because of a penalty kill in overtime.
That is not the whole story of the 4-3 overtime win over the Penguins.
But it is a microcosm of how the Islanders must win — how they must survive — during this injury-filled stretch that is testing every bit of their depth.
The special teams were far from perfect on Tuesday, with the Penguins scoring on the power play and the Islanders letting their own four-on-three chance in overtime go to waste.
But they were timely and it was an area the Islanders did not completely cede — one of the few times this year that has been the case.
The power play right now is 28th in the league at 13.64 percent.
The penalty kill is 30th at 66.67 percent.
If you want an explanation for why the Islanders so often have lost games despite winning the expected goals and shot count, there it is in black and white.
Only now, as Patrick Roy acknowledged, the Islanders are probably going to see more and more nights like Tuesday, where they are spending much of the five-on-five play in their own zone.
That is in no small part a function of being without three of their opening-night defensemen and two-thirds of their top line.
“Are we gonna give up more shots? Yes,” Roy said. “We gave up 40 against the Rangers, we gave up 35 again tonight. It’s gonna happen because these guys now need to get more comfortable at that level and they won’t gap up like, example, [Alexander Romanov] would do or [Adam Pelech] would do. It’s normal. They need time and they need to get that experience, so we need to consider that as well when we look at them.”
That frank assessment of how the Islanders can expect the tide of five-on-five play to go is probably correct, at least until a couple of their defensemen are back.
Which makes it all the more paramount that their special teams win those games instead of losing them.
This is not a new paradigm — it’s been a long time since the Islanders could reliably depend on their power play, and the penalty kill was historically awful last season — but the importance of reversing it has suddenly grown exponentially.
A healthy version of the Islanders could hang around in the playoff race with bad special teams.
An unhealthy version of the Islanders might be able to hang around with good special teams.
There is no version of the Islanders that is missing five regulars, struggles on both special teams and is still in the playoff race at the new year.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Islanders need to turn into world-beaters when the game isn’t at even strength.
But it does mean that they can’t be in the bottom half of the league, and that they need to at least step up at the right time within games on special teams.
It’s not the highest bar in the world to set, but it’s one the Islanders have struggled to clear with any kind of consistency for a long time.
Doing so on Tuesday was, in no small measure, a reason they turned a demoralizing night into perhaps their best win of the season thus far.
The equation is not going to get any easier anytime soon — not with six of their next seven on the road and no real indication that any of the injured players will be back soon.
So this is how the Islanders need to change it in their favor.
“Definitely gave the group confidence, it gave the special teams confidence, too,” Bo Horvat said. “We definitely can be better in that area. I think it’s gonna help us win a lot of games. It helped us win tonight.”
