It was far from consistent and at times, certainly not pretty, but the New York Islanders managed to get the job done with one game to spare.
A 4-1 win on Monday night against the New Jersey Devils clinched third place in the Metropolitan Division and with it, a playoff berth for the fifth time in six years. For a second consecutive season, they’ll face the Carolina Hurricanes — the team they lost to in six games last year — in the first round.
“Very, very, very proud,” head coach Patrick Roy said. “They played some very good hockey down the stretch. They were resilient, they worked together. We learned how to win.”
Roy took over on Jan. 20 after the Islanders fired Lane Lambert amidst a 19-15-11 start that featured a seven-game losing streak in November and a stretch from mid-December to mid-January in which they lost 12 of 17 games.
Upon Lambert’s firing, the Islanders were sixth in the eight-team Metropolitan Division with four teams ahead of them in the Wild Card standings, as well.
The new bench boss did not immediately right the ship, either. Roy lost eight of his first 12 games in charge of the Islanders while attempting to institute a new, offensively-aggressive system.
It appeared as though it finally clicked with a six-game winning streak from Feb. 26 to March 10, but it was followed up with an immediate six-game losing streak that also featured just two wins over a 10-game stretch.
On March 31 — just two weeks before the end of the regular season — they were five points out of a Wild Card spot and were in fifth in the division.
“We were challenged with that a lot this year,” Islanders captain Anders Lee said. “The biggest thing was that we came to the rink every day and we worked hard. It was tough at times to feel like we were going to pull ourselves out of it. We always believed in it, but you still have to go out there and perform and make it happen.
“I’m really proud of this group for sticking with one another and committing to the goal at hand.”
With many leaving them left for dead and their backs against the wall, the Islanders finally shifted into gear to finish the season with a flurry. They have won eight of their last nine games to catapult three teams in the Eastern Conference standings to avoid any talks of Wild Cards or a first-round matchup with the crosstown-rival Rangers.
“Ten games ago, nobody gave us a chance to be in that playoff picture,” Roy said. “Now, here we are… It’s nice to see our guys rewarded for that hard work.”
“The whole goal is to be playing your best hockey at the right time,” Lee added. “We’re putting things together here to continue to build off a foundation that’s putting ourselves in a position every night to win. We’ve had stretches where we’ve been good but over the longer span, it wasn’t as consistent as it needed to be. Now, you’re seeing that night in and night out.”
Regardless of their last-season flourish, the eye test is not kind to the Islanders. They have a minus-18 goal differential this season and their penalty kill was the worst in the NHL. It is not a great formula for playoff success, but Roy — who won four Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche — is not too concerned with low expectations.
“Nobody gave us a chance in Montreal in ’86 or ’93,” he said. “We played one game at a time and we didn’t do more than that. I think right now, let’s finish our season and see who we’re going to play in the playoffs.”
