Islanders enjoy rare two-day breather during taxing schedule
The Islanders' Noah Dobson, Brock Nelson and Anders Lee celebrate a goal scored by Nelson in the second period of an NHL game against the Stars on Tuesday in Dallas. Credit: AP
RALEIGH, N.C. — At last, there was some rest on Wednesday for the no doubt weary Islanders in a relentless schedule.
They next face the Metropolitan Division-leading Hurricanes on Friday night at PNC Arena after having a season-high four-game winning streak snapped in Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss to the Stars. The Islanders’ five-game road trip ends Saturday night against the Blues.
Two days between games is something the team hasn’t experienced in a month.
“We’ll just have to get as fresh as we can,” coach Barry Trotz said. “We’re playing pretty well every second day. Mostly every week it’s five games a week if you stack the weekends up. You don’t know when you’re going to hit a wall. We’re going to try to replenish the tanks as much as we can and then we’ll go at it again.”
Wednesday was strictly a travel day for the Islanders. Not that the Islanders have practiced on off days as they are concluding the season with 38 games in a breakneck 69 days. They played a franchise-record 17 games in March and have 16 in April. Friday and Saturday will mark their sixth set of back-to-back games since Feb. 26.
The last time they had two days off from games in a row was March 8-9. It will happen just once more this month.
“That’ll be nice,” Brock Nelson said. “A couple of us were talking about that yesterday, just the run we’ve had. It seems like we’ve played three straight weeks, or four straight weeks of four games in seven nights. You get into that routine and that rhythm of either it’s a game day or a non-game day. So to have two days, it will probably feel like an eternity to a couple of guys, being able to relax, recover and shut the mind off a bit from the game.
“Hopefully, we can use that and take advantage of that knowing after that we’ve got a back-to-back with travel again. A tough one. These two days to get rest will be nice.”
The Islanders have played well through the grueling stretch as Tuesday’s loss still left them 11-4-1 since March 10.
But their chances of overtaking the Capitals for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot remain remote and the Islanders still must prove they can elevate their game against the NHL’s best.
Their loss to the Stars left them 7-22-2 against the 16 teams holding playoff spots entering Wednesday’s play; the Islanders have been outscored 104-64 in those games. Eleven of their final 13 games are against teams currently playoff-bound.
The Islanders lost their season opener in Carolina, 6-3, on Oct. 14 but beat the Blues, 2-1, at UBS Arena on March 5.
“We’ve got two very good teams coming up in Carolina and St. Louis and, after that, we’ve got a number of other teams that are very good,” Trotz said. “Our schedule and our opponents are very good. So we’ll play as hard as we can.”
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.
