Just over a week ago, the Bridgeport Islanders were flying high. Ruslan Iskhakov had carried them to a Saturday night win over the Hartford Wolfpack with a spectacular shootout goal, giving the Islanders their fourth win in a row for the first time all season. With the win, the Islanders had narrowed the gap between them and the rest of the Atlantic to eight points, smaller than it had been since very early on in the 2023-24 campaign. At that point, the Islanders had 16 games remaining in their season, and while the gap was large, a playoff berth was not out of the question.
A Bleak Picture
Their performance since that shootout win against the Wolfpack has just about been the dagger in the Islanders’ season: the team posted four regulation losses in the following seven days, getting outscored by a combined total of 10 goals. The team from Bridgeport now sits 13 games behind the Lehigh Valley Phantoms for the last playoff spot in the Atlantic Division, a deficit that they would need something barely short of a miracle to overcome.
The Islanders will face the Phantoms three more times before the end of the season; they will need to win all three of those games and get some help from both the Phantoms and the Springfield Thunderbirds who also sit ahead of them in their division to contend for a playoff spot come the second half of April.
Shooting But Not Scoring
Throughout the entirety of the 2023-24 season, the Islanders have not struggled to put pucks on net; they have, however, struggled to score goals. Thus far in the season, they have put 1,892 shots on goal or over 30 per game, which is more than all but three teams in the American Hockey League (AHL). They have outshot their opponents comfortably in all three periods; somewhat miraculously, however, they have the fewest goals in the league, having been outscored by double digits in each of the three periods throughout the course of the year.
Related: Bridgeport Islanders Lose Critical Matchup With Phantoms
The Islanders’ 134 goals on 1,892 shots this season gives them a 7.0% shooting percentage, meaning that opposing goalies have posted a save percentage (SV%) of .930 against them; for context, this SV% would tie Hershey Bears’ netminder Clay Stevenson for the best in the AHL this season. The team with the lowest shooting percentage in the NHL thus far in 2023-24 is the Chicago Blackhawks, who sit over a percentage point higher than the Islanders at 8.1%. Perhaps the most eye-opening figure of all is that Bridgeport has outshot their opponent 36 times this season and they have won just 11 of those games. Their abysmally low shooting percentage likely indicates a poor overall quality of the shots they have taken this season, which explains why they struggled to win games despite outshooting their opponents.
Exceptions
While as a whole the team’s shooting percentage is remarkably low, there are some exceptions. Iskhakov and Matt Maggio are the two players on the Islanders who have put more than 100 shots on goal in the season and are shooting at greater than a 10% line (Iskhakov at 11.3% and Maggio at 10.9%). The player who is an outlier in the other direction is Tyce Thompson, who has put 105 shots on goal and scored on just three of them.
The Islanders’ lack of quality shots has resulted in a shooting percentage that has left them unable to win games. While the other aspects of their season have not been perfect, a 7.0% shooting percentage has proven to be simply impossible to overcome, even with a defensive performance that has not been bad on the season.
