Every game is a must-win in Islanders' playoff hunt
Anders Lee #27 and Semyon Varlamov #40 of the Islanders celebrate after defeating the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Friday, April 1, 2022 in New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
DALLAS — The Islanders face essentially a must-win situation in each of their final 14 games, starting Tuesday night against the Stars at American Airlines Center.
But it’s been like that for a while now as the team battles long odds to re-insert itself into playoff contention. If nothing else, the Islanders have at least changed the narrative from projecting what changes need to be made for next season to where a fourth straight postseason berth remains a faint possibility.
“A few weeks back, a month back, whatever you want to go back on and start to look at how we started to play better in the last little bit, it was just our commitment to each other to finish this thing out the right way,” captain Anders Lee said. “You’ve heard that narrative a little bit from us. We’ve built off of that. We’re making games important down the stretch.
“Regardless of where we’re at, we want to continue to get to where we want to go. That includes the rest of this season.”
The Islanders entered Tuesday’s match having won the first two games of this five-game road trip, a season-high four straight and are on an 11-3-1 run since March 10.
That placed them 11 points behind the Capitals for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot. Any combination of 17 points lost by them or gained by the Capitals will eliminate the Islanders from playoff contention.
But the Islanders have had success over the past month focusing on small-picture details and not worrying about things out of their control.
Now, the Capitals have lost four of six and the Islanders have a home-and-home series against them in the season’s final week.
The Islanders know where they are in the NHL standings. But they’re not obsessing over that right now.
“I don’t think anything changes in that regard,” Lee said. “We’ve got to take it game by game, the way we have been the last month or so. Just take advantage of the opportunity that we have.”
Of course, the Islanders’ recent play was what was expected from them at the start of the season coming off back-to-back berths in the NHL semifinals.
Plenty of inconsistent play fueled their surprisingly disappointing first four months of the season. But plenty of outside factors contributed as well, namely COVID-19 outbreaks that both left them playing games with a depleted roster and forced numerous games to be rescheduled, leading to a heavily-condensed schedule since mid-February.
If nothing else, coach Barry Trotz has appreciated his club didn’t quit on the season.
“I think what you look for is the professionalism,” Trotz said. “You hear this around the league, ‘He’s a good teammate, but are they good pros?’ That’s, to me, the key. Are they good pros? The difference between being a good teammate and a good pro is you’re consistently just worrying about what you need to do so the team can have success.
“Since the point where we were five games under .500 — and we know all the reasons and there’s no excuses, it just happened — we’re actually 10 games over.”
An 0-8-3 skid left the Islanders at 5-10-5 on Dec. 5. They entered Tuesday 27-17-4 since.
“There’s not really any satisfaction, it’s just we know where we should be and it just validates that we can play that way,” Trotz said. “Now, I don’t know how the next [14] games are going to go. They’re against very good opponents that are right there. We’ve got lots of really good opponents. We haven’t gotten enough wins against those teams that are ahead of us.”
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.
