They rolled over in a perfectly appropriate finish to a perfectly forgettable season.
I am trying to think of a season where I had lower expectations for the New York Islanders, and I’m having trouble recalling it. During the nadir of the Garth Snow rebuild, there was at least managed expectations about collecting and hoarding assets, trading your Andy Suttons (because I’m an expert) for a pick that was later packaged to move up and draft Brock Nelson.
(Snow had a very mixed record of trading up and down, such as the time he traded up to select Calvin de Haan by spending picks that were used on Nick Leddy and Erik Haula. But sometimes it worked out. Nikita Filatov was not our bust.)
Anyway, I had bubble-at-best expectations for the Isles this year and that’s about as high as they ever got. Yes, there were injuries, but there were also healthy Islanders who did inadequate but completely predictable loss-facilitating things given their talent and teammates. They returned last year’s uninspiring roster plus Anthony Duclair and Max Tsyplakov, two nice additions but not the kind that would make you think anything has meaningfully changed.
And it hasn’t. Last night they mercifully put an end to this season with an embarrassing, odd-man-rush-heavy 6-1 blowout loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, who finished the season winning six in a row while barely missing the playoffs.
Playing like dog slobber in the finale seems oh so appropriate for 2024-25. Hudson Fasching getting the only goal to double his season total was {chef’s kiss} a masterclass in summing up the season in one event. True, this team had some bright spots (e.g. Anders Lee in a major bounce-back year while trying to captain them to relevance), and overall I like a lot of the players and don’t blame them for their collective fate. But overall the season reflected the narrow, delusional “believe in this group” nature of the man at the helm.
If Lou Lamoriello is in charge of their offseason (and all signs suggest he will be), then it better involve major surgery, and not the kind that entails firing off 1st-round picks for middling vets or to subsidize cap dumps. Hopefully there is a realization that was not there last summer, so we don’t have to again endure 82 games of someone else’s misplaced hope while the realistic outcome stares us in the face, like Patrick Roy praising a team that outshot the opposition while losing badly.
I’ll say one last time that the contrast between Lou’s approach and Doug Armstrong’s with the Blues is eye-opening. One will admit mistakes and be aggressive in fixing them, the other is really, really thorough about making sure no one talks to the media.
It’s almost as if you can build a strong team culture without policing haircuts and uniform numbers. Just imagine!
Islanders News
- Post-mortem: “Missing the playoffs stinks,” says Bo. [Newsday]
- Three Takeaways: 1. You suck. 2. You suck. 3. You collectively suck but it’s not your fault. [Isles]
- The Skinny: The Isles finished at NHL-.500 for the first time since 1993-94, when they went 36-36-12 in an 84-game season. [Isles]
- The Islanders have a lot of defensemen and should probably have fewer in the future. [Post]
- Some of the nice things Boomer (Blowhard) Esiason said about his son-in-law as he likely concludes his NHL career. [THN]
- An actually neat story coming out of Bridgeport! Ross Mitton and Marshall Warren. [B-Isles]
Elsewhere
None of last night’s scores mattered in the least, other than ensuring the Isles finished with 10th-best lottery odds.
- In a pleasant surprise, Dougie Hamilton returned to the Devils lineup just in time for playoffs. Still probably losing to Carolina, but I hope they don’t. [NHL]
- Is Connor Bedard a Toronto guy? (No.) Is that why it’s a thing to speculate he wants out of miserable Chicago? Enough to elicit this quote: “if I looked a little sad on the bench or something, maybe people can take it out of context.” [NHL]
- Son of Bourne predicts the Eastern matchups. [Sportsnet]
- The Jets signed Neal Pionk to a six-year, $7M AAV extension. With a similar points total (but not quite UFA), could that please be the ceiling for Noah Dobson’s next contract? [NHL]
A Note to Readers
Hey, everyone. Thanks for reading and commenting all season. Thanks for even occasionally being civil or gracious to one another even though you harbor Very Strongly Held Beliefs About A Professional Sports Team. The “Someone on the Internet is Wrong” vibe is strong with this bunch, but so is the sense of humor, the sense of absurdity, and the gallows existential “Why are we here? Yet we are here.” of it all.
Those of us who write with bylines here pretty much do it as a labor of love and to facilitate conversation about our favorite team/tormenter. We’re all busy and only getting busier in our respective lives, so thanks for coming back and being patient when we post late or get something wrong. (Thanks also for assuming the worst when your comments are moderated by robots beyond our immediate control.)
I’m really excited for the NHL playoffs as a neutral, so we’ll try to keep posts up about that in tandem with important Islanders topics. It’s a pivotal offseason ahead, and I’m glad you all will be here to help digest it.