Andrew Gross: Islanders must survive 'severe' schedule to make playoffs
Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin will have to be at his best during highly squeezed NHL schedule Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
First off, hockey is not meant to be played on a baseball schedule. But, to have a three-week Olympic break in February, the NHL has squeezed October, November, December, January, March and April as tight as possible.
Especially now. Especially for the Islanders, whose playoff chances may ride on this breakneck slate of six games over nine days, including five games against Metropolitan Division opponents.
That starts on Wednesday night against the Rangers at UBS Arena, with the teams playing again on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
So it’s no surprise general manager Mathieu Darche acted well in advance of the March 6 trade deadline, acquiring wing Ondrej Palat, a third-round pick in 2026 and a sixth-round pick in 2027 on Tuesday for Max Tsyplakov, who never fully gained coach Patrick Roy’s trust. On Monday, Darche swapped a third-round pick in 2026 to the Rangers for defenseman Carson Soucy.
Still, the Islanders increased their hold on third place in the division to a four-point gap over the Flyers with a 4-0 win in Philadelphia on Monday night. The Islanders have won the first two games this season over their New York rivals by an aggregate 7-0.
To get back to the opening sentence, though, this is not how the hockey gods meant the NHL schedule to be played. Playing six games in 12 days would be considered a strenuous stretch. Six in nine seems (checks thesaurus) severe.
But this is how the Islanders’ season may be determined. A strong showing, say 4-1-1 through this stretch would definitely solidify their playoff positioning going into the Olympic break, which starts after the Islanders face the Devils in Newark, New Jersey on Feb. 5 with their season not resuming until a game in Montreal on Feb. 26.
A so-so showing, say 2-3-1, or a poor effort, say 1-4-1, could end their chances of catching the Penguins for second place in the division and securing home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. And it could allow the Flyers, Capitals or Devils to catch them for third place, with all indications being the Atlantic Division will secure five playoff spots to the Metropolitan Division’s three.
Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who scored twice against the Flyers, including a shorthanded tally, said the Islanders approached that match as if it were a playoff game.
Guess what? That is likely how all the remaining 30 games between now and the season-finale against the visiting Hurricanes on April 14 must be played. That’s certainly true in a back-to-back scenario with the retooling — general manager Chris Drury’s word, we’d call it a sell-off and long-term rebuild — Rangers.
“We all know how much pride we take in those battle of New York games, I think it will be easy to bring that,” Pageau said in his post-game interview with MSG Networks. “We had so much fun doing it today, why not do it again? Every game is a four-point game almost until the break. We take that as motivation. We want to finish in a good spot.”
But, again, going back to the opening statement, it’s impossible to do that without the proper rest and recovery time. There are going to be games when the Islanders’ legs just are not there and it will look like they’re skating in quicksand. Of course that will be true for some of their opponents as well so the Islanders must take advantage of those situations.
“There’s still plenty of time,” defenseman Tony DeAngelo said after scoring his first power-play goal as an Islander against the Flyers. “But those four-point games are big games. But like I keep saying, it’s just about the process of doing the same thing over and over again. It’s how you win. You can’t just get up for one big game and then go back to doing bad habits in the next one. It needs to be a consistent process of doing just what we did there with a lot of success.”
That’s particularly true even with the ramped-up emotions associated with facing the Rangers, like the Flyers, one of DeAngelo’s former teams.
“Same thing,” DeAngelo said when asked what the mindset needed to be on Wednesday night. “Obviously a little more when you get the Rangers as far as the fans go. They’ll be a little more angry with each other. But, for us, you’ve got to keep playing the same way. Every game is going to be just as important.”
It’s a hockey mentality that will be tested over a baseball-like schedule.
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.
