The New York Islanders are already going through a rough stretch. They lost three straight before ending October in last place in the Metropolitan Division. Things went from bad to worse on Friday, Nov. 1, when the team announced that Mathew Barzal wouldn’t make the road trip to Buffalo. He’s staying on Long Island to receive medical work on an upper-body injury.
Related: Islanders’ Mat Barzal Out With Upper-Body Injury
The timeline for Barzal’s return is unclear, but what is clear is that the Islanders are in trouble. The team was already duct-taped together with the star power leading the way, and without the top-end talent to help them out, the outlook moving forward is bleak. This team was built to fail, and it shows.
Islanders Lack a Scoring Line Without Barzal
Heading into the game against the Buffalo Sabres, it’s hard to tell which line is the top one. In practice, Bo Horvat centered a line with Anders Lee and Jean-Gabriel Pageau. The Brock Nelson line has Kyle Palmieri and Maxim Tsyplakov on the wings, but they can’t carry the Islanders.
Without Barzal’s playmaking presence on the top line, the Islanders’ offense will fall flat. They are averaging only 2.10 goals per game and have only scored one goal in the last two. Barzal scored two goals and three assists in 10 games to start the season, and suddenly, the Islanders have no solution to replace him.
Sure, they can try to win games with their defense, but there are two issues with that. First, Alexander Romanov is day-to-day with an injury, and even when he returns, he won’t be the same force that can eliminate opponents. The other problem is that the offense needs to score at least a few goals to win games, and this season, they’ve proven incapable of doing so. Losing Barzal won’t help the cause.
Duclair’s Injury Adds to the Issues
The Anthony Duclair signing was expected to put the Islanders over the top, taking a good team and making it one of the best in the NHL. With Duclair sidelined with a lower-body injury, it now seems he’s been duct-taping a good roster together and preventing it from falling apart.
The Islanders have unraveled since the Duclair injury. He added a scoring presence to the top line and worked well with both Barzal and Horvat. The team returned a similar roster to last season, one that didn’t have a great offense to begin with, but Duclair was supposed to fix that. Without him, the offense hasn’t been the same.
Duclair, like Barzal, was one of the integral forwards carrying the offense, and there isn’t the depth in place to have a reliable offense without him. The injuries are starting to pile up, and so are the losses and poor play.
Islanders Are Built to Fail
There’s a common debate about whether it’s better to have a team with depth and no star power or star power with no depth. The Islanders had plenty of depth during their deep playoff runs but lacked the star power to put them over the top. Their general manager (GM) Lou Lamoriello started to pivot in the 2021 offseason.
He built the Islanders around four players with the Barzal extension, the Horvat trade, the Ilya Sorokin extension, and Noah Dobson already being a key part of the roster. With the team’s depth declining in recent seasons, Lamoriello added another elite skater in Duclair in hopes that it would salvage things.
The problem is when an injury or two hits, the Islanders fall apart. This happens to a lot of top-heavy rosters, but this team has little to no depth to compensate, and the star players are good but not great. They can’t bail out the roster after a few injuries.
The Islanders are watching their season slip away and need things to turn around quickly if they hope to make the playoffs. Otherwise, the season could be over early, and big changes might happen because of it. If the roster is flawed with no path to contend in site, the GM must take the blame, and a new one must come in to clean up the mess.
