ELMONT, NY — The New York Islanders have plenty of reasons to stay down on the canvas after repeatedly being sent there by the relentless haymakers provided by the 2024-25 season.
Ceaseless injuries have decimated head coach Patrick Roy’s side, which has seemingly drawn inspiration from the Rocky movie franchise lately. Currently, more than half of the starting defense is sidelined, with Noah Dobson, Mike Reilly, and Ryan Pulock on some form of injured reserve while Scott Mayfield is day-to-day.
General manager Lou Lamoriello assembled a precarious replacement system, going out and acquiring Tony DeAngelo, who was playing in Russia, Scott Perunovich from the St. Louis Blues, and Adam Boqvist from the Florida Panthers — the latter two expendable blue-line pieces on their former teams.
Star winger Mathew Barzal was placed on injured reserve on Tuesday and is out indefinitely after he hurt his right knee blocking a shot on Saturday in Tampa. It is the second long-term injury he suffered this season, relegating the Islanders to the sobering reality that their newly-built first line of him, Bo Horvat, and Anthony Duclair, who also missed 28 games due to injury, will have played just five games together this year.
In total, the Islanders have lost 201 man games this season, as the revolving door within the lineup looked as though it doomed their season at the halfway point of 2024-25.
Just two weeks ago, New York was in last place in the Metropolitan Division and eight points out of the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, with six teams sitting between them and a playoff berth.
They could have thrown in the towel, resigned themselves to the fact that their season was over, and opened the door for Lamoriello to sell at the trade deadline. But Roy sees his team like that iconic fictional boxer from Philadelphia, and the Islanders have willed their way back into the playoff picture.
“This morning, I was talking about the story of Rocky,” Roy said. “We don’t want to go down. I think people love people who refuse to go down. And when they go down, they get back up. That’s exactly what we did.”
The Islanders have won eight of their last nine games, the latest coming on Tuesday night at UBS Arena, when they defeated the Vegas Golden Knights, one of the top teams in the Western Conference, 2-1.
The hot streak has catapulted them up the standings past four teams. They woke up Wednesday morning just three points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for that last wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
Suddenly, the bell for New York is far from being rung.
“We’re pretty banged up. Obviously, we’ve got some really key guys out of the lineup,” star center Bo Horvat, who scored the first goal on Tuesday night, said. “But the guys that we’ve brought in and the guys that have stayed in the lineup have been paying awesome for us, and we’re going to need that here going down the stretch. All these games matter.”
