COLUMBUS, Ohio — Here’s a fact that I am not so sure what to make of: The Islanders had a better points percentage under Lane Lambert this season than they do under Patrick Roy.
Now, there are plenty of caveats to that on both sides.
The team’s underlying numbers at five-on-five are better across the board under Roy, but their special teams have been worse. Lambert had more injuries to deal with. Roy has gotten worse goaltending and played a slightly higher percentage of games on the road.
And regardless of record, it was clear by the end of Lambert’s tenure that the Islanders were no longer playing for him. So this is not an attempt to relitigate the decision to fire him.
Rather, it is a way of saying that, barring the sort of postseason run that puts any doubts to bed, the real judgment for Roy will come next season.
As a public-facing representative of the organization, Roy has been incredibly impressive.
He has been open and honest, showing the parts of his personality that made him a great player without veering into the nastiness that was a recurring theme of his career. There is immense respect for him in the dressing room, so much so that the Islanders suffered through a complete system overhaul and miniature training camp in the middle of the season with no complaints.
That is a lot for Roy to have asked, and the process has been understandably imperfect. But the room bought in, in large part because Roy is an excellent communicator with gravitas that speaks for itself.
The on-ice product under his tutelage has varied wildly on a nightly basis, but the Islanders’ 14-12-4 record going into Thursday’s match against Columbus is underwhelming.
There have been moments when the Islanders have looked like a far more coherent team, and their best performances under Roy have been their best performances of the season. But there have been just as many games in which they have inexplicably not shown up.
The Islanders are working with a flawed roster in any system, but particularly in Roy’s. This was a team built to play defense-first hockey and absorb pressure. Roy is the first coach the Islanders have had since they started winning who has emphasized puck possession as a means of winning. That has proven to be an element this team struggles to execute consistently.
When we spoke with Lou Lamoriello in late February, I asked whether Roy’s system changed the sort of players he wants on the roster. In short, the answer was not really, because any hockey player at the NHL level should be able to adapt.
“If you can’t adjust, then that has to be looked at,” Lamoriello said. “But players should be able to adjust.”
That’s true to an extent. But if you build a roster for a certain style of play, then change it dramatically overnight, well, the number of players who can’t adjust might be a little high.
Exactly what changes the Islanders can make to the group this offseason isn’t completely clear. That will come down to retirement decisions, whether the finish to this season convinces management — not just Lamoriello but also Scott Malkin — that it can afford running back the same basic core and whether the Islanders can lure a free agent or two.
But it is difficult to see a redux of the past two offseasons — in which Julien Gauthier and Nikita Soshnikov were the only additions to the NHL roster, in either season, via free agency — happening.
At minimum, the bottom six has to look different, and the opportunity to change up the bottom defense pair — Sebastian Aho, Mike Reilly and Robert Bortuzzo are unrestricted free agents — should be closely examined.
In a more extreme scenario, the Islanders could look at trading a member of the core.
Either way, Roy will have a roster to work with that is at least a little more representative of how he wants to play. And he will have a full training camp and preseason to work with.
That may prove he is an excellent coach who was brought in too late to salvage this season.
Or it might prove he cannot do in the NHL what he proved adept at doing in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League.
Five thoughts ahead of the Blue Jackets game
1️⃣ Reuniting Mat Barzal and Bo Horvat was long overdue. So was rejiggering the power-play units. Both moves paid off almost instantly, with Barzal assisting Horvat on their first shift back together and on their first shift with a new-look top power play.
2️⃣ Another reason why Roy is in a tough spot: the lack of lineup experimentation by Lambert. There was a logic in giving Barzal, Horvat and Brock Nelson each their own line on the road and forcing opposing teams to pick which matchup they wanted. But doing it for the first time in late March as opposed to early in the season is not ideal.
3️⃣ Anders Lee has been the target of a lot of criticism this season, so it is worth noting that he played an exemplary pair of games in Philadelphia and against the Blackhawks. It got lost in the mix after the game went to overtime, but his battle level in the third period against the Flyers was nothing short of fantastic. To anyone questioning why he deserves the captaincy, that is your answer.
4️⃣ Something that stuck out in the stats from Tuesday was the disparity between the Islanders’ Corsi-for percentage (59.78 percent at five-on-five) and their expected goals percentage (46.22 percent). That is a sign that there were a few too many attempts from low-danger areas.
5️⃣ Since the latest shuffling of his defense pairs, Roy has deployed Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock against the opposition’s top lines. The duo drew the matchup Tuesday against Connor Bedard. I’m curious to see whether Alexander Romanov and Noah Dobson return to that job — which they had for much of the season while Pelech and/or Pulock were hurt — at some point between now and the end of the season.
Stat’s so
The Islanders have the second-toughest remaining strength of schedule among the four teams in the wild-card race (.558).
The Flyers hold the easiest (.524).
The Blue Jackets and Canadiens are the only teams left on the Islanders’ schedule with records below NHL-.500, and they have three games against projected playoff teams — Nashville at home and a pair of games against the Rangers.
