On the ice from Long Island
Sign up for Inside the Islanders by Ethan Sears, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.
BOSTON — Of all 32 teams in the league, the Islanders might be the one most comfortable and confident in their brand of hockey.
That has not changed in about five years since general manager Lou Lamoriello took over. The Islanders want to grind. They want to hit. They want to play physically and wear you down. That is their path to winning without overwhelming skill.
“You can peg us in as a defensive team, whatever, boring team, whatever you want to call us,” Kyle Palmieri said. “But we’re here to try and win hockey games. If it takes defensive, boring, our goalies playing hockey, whatever it is, it’s gonna be an opportunity for us to try to win a hockey game. That’s it. That’s what this group is here to do.”
Any dissection of the issues plaguing the Islanders right now needs to start and end with their failure to do just that.
Going into Thursday’s game in Boston, the Islanders were allowing the most shot attempts in the league per 60 minutes at five-on-five.
The only teams allowing more shots on net per 60 were the Blackhawks and Sharks. Just four teams were allowing more high-danger chances.
That is not boring, defensive hockey. It is hoping the goaltender wins you the game every night, and it is how the Islanders have played even in most of the games they’ve won.
Far more than a solid 5-3-3 record, that is what is so alarming about the season’s first 11 games.
Following a back-to-basics Wednesday practice during which coach Lane Lambert spent most of his time going over defensive-zone principles the team seems to have abandoned, the most the Islanders could say for the style of play Palmieri described is that they’ve done it sometimes. Just not all the time.
“We’ve had periods of letdowns, we’ve taken penalties,” Cal Clutterbuck said. “We’ve done things that are uncharacteristic to our identity, and that’s why our record isn’t better than it is. I think we’ve played well enough, long enough, for that record to be better. We need to not give up third-period leads, and when you go into a third period tied or down one, we need to stick with the program. The blueprint’s here.”
Not only is the blueprint there, but pretty much every player on the roster has executed it successfully in the past.
So that leaves us asking whether the failure to do it now is just a handful of lapses unhelpfully strung together or indicative of bigger issues.
The answer can only come with time, but unlike last season — when it took the first half for the Islanders to reconcile that identity with the tweaks Lambert was making — there is not a convenient explanation for why things routinely are falling to pieces in the third period.
“I think you kinda go into this sort of protection mindset, and that’s not the mindset that actually succeeds in those situations,” Clutterbuck said. “It’s continuing to push forward, but having support in behind, having the layers that we always had. You think about it: You go through an entire game, you build a 3-0, 3-1 lead playing a certain way and then we’re gonna go and change that in the third period?
“And it’s not something that’s done intentionally. It’s a mentality that creeps in. And that’s not the way we’ve done it in the past. We’ll get back to that.”
Thing is, even when the Islanders are going into the final period with leads, it’s not as if they are routinely dominating the first 40 minutes.
More often, the first two periods have felt like a magic trick that gets exposed in the third.
Their success in the past has been built on a foundation of getting pucks deep, forechecking hard and rolling four lines. They have been a hard team to play against.
Right now, far too much of their scoring is coming from one-and-done rush chances. It has been exceedingly rare to see the Islanders spend shifts at a time in the offensive zone. The Islanders could use a greasy goal or two, but there has been very little net presence — Anders Lee has scored just once. They are not making life hard for opponents.
A lot of that ties back to the puck management Lambert has harped on in the defensive zone. But not all of it.
“Gotta find a way, when the other team’s pressing, to shut it down, break out and get pucks,” Mat Barzal told The Post. “That’s when we’re good. Feel like we go through lulls a little bit every once in a while — four, five, six minutes where they’re kinda just pressing on us the whole time. Gotta find a way to keep those shorter.”
But it is more than just a bad few minutes per game the Islanders need to shore up. They need to go back to the fundamentals that gave them success in the first place.
Instead of the usual Dads’ trip, the Islanders invited the Moms up to Boston for Thursday’s game. The players’ mothers jetted up with the team after joining them for practice on Long Island.
“The dads have been out here quite a bit. And the moms do all the grunt work,” Clutterbuck said. “They did all the grunt work when we were kids. It was getting you fed, getting you off to school, picking you up. Dad was at work, he kinda got to swoop in and get to watch and take you home. The moms do a lot. I see it with my own wife, they keep the engine going. They’re the unsung hero behind the scenes, so it’s nice to be able to take them along for one.”
As to whether he might notice them in the stands during the game, though, Clutterbuck said probably not.
“During a game, there’s not much else you’re thinking about,” he said. “The pope could be there and I don’t give a s—t.”
The Islanders are looking to win a regular-season game at TD Garden for the first time since March 25, 2021, having lost six in a row since Anthony Beauvillier’s overtime winner that night.
The playoff series between the two teams that year, however, did include two Islanders wins in the building.
Given that the Bruins come in with a 10-1-1 record and not yet having lost in regulation at home, the Islanders might be facing an uphill climb.