Perhaps the organization’s reaction to not getting past the first round for three straight seasons says everything about how serious the Islanders are about developing a championship contender.
Assuming a miracle doesn’t happen with the Isles losing 3-0 to Carolina and facing elimination on Saturday, unless owners are comfortable asking season ticket holders to fork out more than 11 percent, With no excuses left to stick with the group, next season we’ll likely see more teams stuck on the path to mediocrity.
This offseason is a natural starting point for a shake-up for the Islanders, even if a complete rebuild is out of the question given how many players are under long-term contracts. Even if next year is a little worse, this isn’t going to work, so the Islanders have to go that route.
Cal Clutterbuck, Matt Martin, Oliver Wahlstrom, Simon Holmstrom, Kyle MacLean, Mike Riley, Robert Bortuzzo and Sebastian Aho are all on expiring contracts. Brock Nelson, Kyle Palmieri, Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov are entering the final year of their respective contracts. Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Anders Lee have two seasons left.
Contract extensions for Dobson, Romanoff and McLean should be easy. All three are young, talented restricted free agents who could be part of the core the next time the Islanders are ready to compete for a cup, whenever that may be.
A Cup team built around Dobson, Romanov, Matt Barzal, Bo Horvat and Ilya Sorokin should be the long-term goal. It’s a goal Islanders can aspire to, and it’s a goal they can achieve without tanking for years or renting an empty building.
Everyone else? Management will have to have some tough conversations about how best to rebuild the core that has been responsible for the best era of Islanders hockey since the dynasty. And it will have to be a joint effort from general manager Lou Lamoriello and head coach Patrick Roy.
Roy has been overwhelmingly positive about the group publicly since taking over behind the bench, and said Friday he wasn’t thinking about the offseason. Upon taking the job, he quickly made it clear that he did not want to step into Lamoriello territory.
But now the Islanders have a roster built to play an offensive style that is the exact opposite of Roy’s principles. A few months ago, Roy was preaching about puck possession and likening it to how the Islanders want to play with a lead and how a football team wants to run the ball and kill time. Even when the Islanders finished the regular season 8-0-1, it was rare to see them achieve that kind of performance.
The Islanders need to get the puck faster and stronger. They need a roster that can balance skill and grind. They need four lines that can control and get into the zone, not dumping or chasing. Mr. Roy doesn’t have long enough knowledge of this group’s abilities to be biased, so he should have a say in who stays or goes.
This year, the bottom six has become a scoring black hole, but this is not new. That needs to change.
The third line never came together as a matchup unit, and Pageau had his worst scoring season without injury or COVID-19 shortened asterisks. The identity line appears to come to a natural end this offseason as Martin and Clutterbuck’s contracts expire. You don’t have to completely flip these units, but they do need to look different.
Riley did enough to deserve a return, but when you think about it within that scope, you can see how the Islanders got here. A left-sided defenseman who can compete for top four minutes with Adam Pelech will be a priority in how the Islanders use the additional cap space they will receive this offseason, with an estimated increase to $87.6 million league-wide. It should be a matter of fact.
Sorokin’s struggles and being on the bench in Game 3 may also have an impact. The futures of Nelson and Palmieri are something to think about. If the Islanders don’t extend the pair, they won’t be close enough to contend for a championship to justify holding on to their contract years.
Dobson has a super-sized expansion coming up that will impact the cap.
There’s the question of Lamoriello’s own position and whether he wants to return to contention at age 81.
These are questions the Islanders avoided facing when the coronavirus outbreak derailed the 2021-22 season, and avoided facing them again a year later after a season similar to this one. is. They told themselves over and over again that this group still had winning DNA and enough to squeeze out an argument to stay the course.
Unless a miracle happens, there is no more room for debate.
