Islanders have depth at point on power play

It's a healthy problem to have: Does Jack Capuano prefer his first power-play unit with Johnny Boychuk at the point or Lubomir Visnovsky?

For now, it's Visnovsky, with Boychuk anchoring the second unit. When Visnovsky missed the first six games of the season with back spasms, Boychuk was out there and the power play was lethal from the first time it hit the ice in Raleigh, thanks to Boychuk's booming slap shot.

With Visnovsky of late, the Islanders have had more success working the puck below the hash marks, as with Brock Nelson's goal in Los Angeles on Thursday. He had loads of room by the goal line for his fourth power-play goal; the other three either banked in off his body from Boychuk's rocket or as the result of a Boychuk shot.

"Johnny's got the big drive from up top, which is a little scarier, but Lubo's got a lot of moves up there,'' Nelson said. "And Johnny [Tavares] really sucks guys in when he's on the half-wall. They have to respect what he brings, so that can open things up for me. If I have a lane to the net, I'll take it, take a shot and try to wreak some havoc. If not, I curl back, regroup and see what else is there.''

Since Visnovsky's return, the power play was 5-for-25 (20 percent) entering last night's game with the Coyotes. With Boychuk on the first unit, the PP was 7-for-27 (25.9 percent).

"They both bring a lot,'' Capuano said. "With Lubo out there two years ago, we were a top-10 power play. But then we put Johnny up there against Winnipeg [last week] and right away we score. So it's also a matter of having a little balance on the two units.''

The first unit has been logging the bulk of the PP time, but the second unit has yet to produce a power-play goal among the 12 the Isles have this season. Tavares and Nelson each have four, Kyle Okposo has two and Boychuk had his two with the first unit in the opening three games.

Fancy numbers favor Isles

The advanced statistic Fenwick, which counts the number of unblocked shot attempts for and against, is considered a good predictor of future success. It's especially well-informed in close game situations (within a goal or tied) and the resulting metric, called Score-Adjusted Fenwick, shows what teams are doing with puck possession and generating chances when the games are tight.

The Islanders' SAF was at 52.43 percent entering last night's game, ninth in the NHL, according to the website fenwick-stats.com. Anything above 50 percent is OK; above 52 percent and sustaining it over a longer haul than 13 games correlates to playoff position quite often. Last season, the Isles' SAF was 48.71, 22nd in the league.

That's what one advanced metric says about the difference this year for the Islanders. What do the players, who don't pay much attention to Corsi or Fenwick, have to say?

"Not to pile on the guys we had last year, but it was just tougher,'' said Calvin de Haan. "We're a deeper group now, some of us have a year under our belts. You look at some of the goals we gave up late in games last year and it felt like the hockey gods were against us at times.

"With the leads we had last year, if we had a deeper group we were a playoff team. It's good to see we've progressed there.''

Isles are hit as road warriors

No matter what happened Saturday night, the Islanders headed home with a winning road record through nine games away from Nassau Coliseum. That's nothing new.

The Islanders went 17-5-2 in their last 24 road games last season and are now 40-27-6 away from home since the start of the abbreviated 2012-13 season.

Only four teams have more than the Isles' 40 road wins in that span, led by the Ducks and Penguins with 45. The Canadiens have 43 and the Blues have 42.