Andrew Gross: Islanders set the tone for the season in their first trip to Ottawa
Islanders center Bo Horvat celebrates his goal in the second period against the Ottawa Senators at the Canadian Tire Centre on Oct. 18, 2025. Credit: Imagn Images/Marc DesRosiers
OTTAWA, Ontario – The gap between trips to the Canadian Tire Centre was immense, both in terms of actual days and the long, winding journey that is an NHL campaign. But as the Islanders took the ice against the Senators on Thursday night for yet another crucial match in their playoff push, it seemed appropriate to acknowledge what happened at the rink five months ago played a role in shaping their season.
The Islanders have shown a penchant for being able to rally from multi-goal deficits and they entered Thursday with 18 of their 39 wins coming in comebacks.
It is a mindset. But that mindset must be developed.
That started on Oct. 18 in a 5-4 win over the Senators in their fifth game of the season.
The Islanders opened with three straight losses before beating the Oilers 4-2 at UBS Arena two days prior. But the Senators took a 2-0 lead at 5:32 of the second period on a goal from Franklin Square’s Shane Pinto. The Islanders tied it at 2-2 and then Anders Lee made it 3-3 at 17:45 of the second period. Yet the Senators took a 4-3 lead into the third period and Ilya Sorokin had to stop Pinto’s penalty shot 2:23 in to keep it a one-goal deficit. That led to Kyle Palmieri’s equalizer at 6:00 of the third period and Lee’s winner as he muscled to the crease at 18:57.
Lee agreed on Thursday the come-from-behind win was a tone-setter.
“In some ways I think it did,” Lee told Newsday. “You have to prove your resiliency early in the year. It’s only helpful if you do. Especially early in a hockey season, if it’s just a win or a loss, it’s like, ‘OK, we weren’t that great tonight, we lost the game.’ Or if we were just good, we won the game. You need to learn how to be in between. Over 82 games, it’s not going to be one or the other. You’re going to be in between playing bad and in between playing good and you still have a hockey game to win.
“So I think we’ve adjusted to that and found a lot of ways this year to win hockey games. I don’t think it hurt us early on in that year just to have a little bit of experience pulling something out in a game that was a tough game.”
Defenseman Ryan Pulock, too, believed that win helped set a foundation.
“Yeah, I think the more you do it, the more you believe in it,” Pulock told Newsday. “By starting it early in the year, I feel like we built up belief. I just feel like we have a lot of confidence in here that we’re never out of it no matter what happens. Sometimes you dig a hole, sometimes you’re not playing well, sometimes it’s just a couple of breaks. Whatever that might be, it’s just about responding and I feel like all year we’ve responded and we believe we’re never out of it.”
Often, that belief is a big part of what separates teams competing for a playoff spot and teams looking ahead to summer tee times.
And it’s infectious. It’s a feeling on the bench during the game. It’s the shoulders that don’t sag.
It was something defenseman Carson Soucy and Ondrej Palat both noticed after being acquired, Soucy from the Rangers on Jan. 26 and Palat from the Devils the next day.
Their former teams have long been out of the playoff chase this season.
“It’s almost just a different feeling in the room or on the bench where it’s a little more deflating giving up that first goal,” Soucy told Newsday. “When you have some comeback wins, if you give up that first one or even the first two sometimes, it doesn’t really hurt the bench that much. There’s still that positivity, that confidence.”
Palat certainly knows both sides of it. While the Devils struggled this season, he was a member of the Lightning as they won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021. What the Islanders have this season – and what they started developing in their first visit to Ottawa – is never a given.
“Exactly,” Palat told Newsday. “I don’t want to say Jersey didn’t feel like it but this team feels like we’re not changing the way we play. We’re not going, ‘Oh, we’re down, it’s going to be a one-man game and everybody is going to try to dangle.’ No. We’re staying in our system. We’re waiting for the opponents to make the mistakes.”
It’s a long season. But what happened during the Islanders’ first trip to Ottawa made an impact.
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.
