Same old Islanders? Veteran returnees, Lou Lamoriello beg to differ
Bo Horvat of the New York Islanders in a preseason game at UBS Arena on Oct. 6, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
It’s not debatable that the Islanders, who will open the season against the Sabres on Saturday night at UBS Arena, are virtually the same group that lost to the Hurricanes in six games in April. Or that they are, again, another year older.
But this group strongly believes it can improve upon that first-round elimination. The reasoning is having top-six forwards Bo Horvat and Pierre Engvall for a full season actually makes them a new team, one that can play faster and score more power-play goals while maintaining their defensive structure.
If not, president/general manager Lou Lamoriello, who will celebrate his 81st birthday on Oct. 21, might not be in charge next season.
Newsday reported in the offseason that ownership offered Lamoriello a contract extension after his original five-year contract expired.
Yet even with a new deal, there’s pressure for Lamoriello’s steadfast belief in his players to translate into the Islanders returning to being a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, as they were in 2020 and 2021 when they went to back-to-back NHL semifinals.
“You can view it as the same group or you can view it as we had two pretty key players that didn’t get to play a full year and then we had our All-Star [Mathew Barzal] being out for the long stretch coming into playoffs,” defenseman Scott Mayfield said. “I don’t really view it as the exact same team. I like the makeup of the team. We’ve had some success, but we’ve got to make sure we find that next level.”
Lamoriello, who has kept his core group together through numerous trade deadlines and offseasons, did so again by re-signing Mayfield and Engvall to seven-year deals, 35-year-old backup goalie Semyon Varlamov to a four-year deal and last season’s find, Hudson Fasching, to a two-year contract. Goalie Ilya Sorokin received an eight-year extension that starts next season. Horvat and a healthy Barzal are in the first season of eight-year deals.
“Yeah, Lou was pretty quiet,” said former Islander Mark Parrish, now an NHL Network analyst and broadcaster for the Minnesota Wild. “But it’s quick to forget how he went and made a big splash and got Bo Horvat before the trade deadline last year. You make trades like that, it’s not surprising that, all of a sudden in the offseason when it comes to signing players, it’s kind of a little quiet. I think it’s a sign that Lou likes what he’s got.”
The Islanders finished 42-31-9 last season and earned the Eastern Conference’s first wild-card spot by winning their last game. Their season nearly was sunk by a 2-8-3 skid in January and then when Barzal missed the final 23 games with a knee injury before returning in the playoffs.
“We had a tough January,” Anders Lee said. “But we did a lot of good things down the stretch and were a really good hockey team and we came up short in a tight series. It doesn’t sit well and it’s not where we wanted to be. But there’s a lot to work off of.”
The Islanders are counting on a few factors for improvement this season:
• First, having Horvat and Engvall for a full season should bolster a power play that finished 30th in the NHL at 35-for-222 (15.8%).
“I’m not concerned about the power play,” Lamoriello said. “I think the power play will rebound and respond. We have the ingredients.”
• Defensemen Alexander Romanov and Noah Dobson, both 23, showed improvement later in the season after Lambert separated them, instead pairing them with blue-line stalwarts Ryan Pulock and Adam Pelech, respectively.
• Right wing Oliver Wahlstrom is working his way back from a season-ending knee injury on Dec. 27.
• Second-line center Brock Nelson, who will turn 32 on Sunday, continues to show season-by-season improvement and scored 37 and 36 goals in his last two seasons.
• And Sorokin is one of the NHL’s elite goalies.
“It starts with goaltending for us,” Nelson said. “Something we pride ourselves on is contributions from everybody. So you get that, you play fast, you play with the structure and details you need to have, we’re confident that we can be a dangerous team.”
Whether that will come to fruition is still debatable.
Beat writer's prediction
Record:: 43-30-9 (95 points), wild-card berth
The Islanders should finish with a similar record to last season’s 42-31-9, when they qualified for the playoffs with a win in their final game. A full season of Bo Horvat and Pierre Engvall — and any improvement on the power-play that brings — should give the Islanders a few extra points and be enough to secure either the seventh or eighth spot in the Eastern Conference. But anything can happen in the postseason, as was shown again last season when two of the four division winners were eliminated by wild-card teams in the first round.
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.
