2023-24 NHL team preview: New York Islanders

LAST SEASON

After missing the playoffs for the first time in the Lou Lamoriello-Barry Trotz era, the Islanders made a bold move to shake up the team by firing Trotz as head coach and hiring his assistant Lane Lambert. You could have made the case that Trotz was a big reason a mediocre roster was making deep playoff runs with the tactics and defensive structure that he brought to the table, so moving on from him felt like Lamoriello was just asking to be next on the chopping block.

To start the season, those suspicions seemed to be correct. The Islanders were a middling team for the first few months, hovering around .500 all the way through January, up to the point where the playoffs seemed like a long shot with a 23-22-5 record through 50 games. But Lamoriello showed that he believed in his team and went for the top trade deadline target at the time in Bo Horvat to help bolster their offense, and while Horvat’s 50-goal pace nosedived off a cliff, the trade did its job for the Islanders’ success.

New York finished off the year going 19-9-4, which wasn’t exactly a success rate that put the fear of god in opponents, but in an Eastern Conference where their closest competition in the Pittsburgh Penguins was doing everything in their power to not make the playoffs, it was good enough to sneak in to the first wild-card spot in the final days. But unlike their fellow Eastern wild-card team in the Florida Panthers, the Islanders didn’t make any big surprises in the playoffs, bowing out in just six games in the first round to the Carolina Hurricanes.

KEY ADDITIONS & SUBTRACTIONS

Additions

Julien Gauthier, RW
Karson Kuhlman, C

Departures

Josh Bailey, RW (Buyout via Chi)
Zach Parise, LW (FA)

OFFENSE

A lot of people see this current era of the Islanders as that of an elite defensive team that can’t produce a ton of offense. While on the surface that was true in 2022-23, a look under the hood indicates that it was actually closer to the other way around. More on the defense in a bit, but in terms of offense, they sat 22nd in goals per game with 2.95 and 16th in 5v5 goals per 60 minutes with 2.64, and when it came to driving offense, they were 13th with 2.79 5v5 expected goals per 60. It’s a group that lacks finishing talent despite some all right underlying numbers. They only had five players with 40 points or more and three players with 20 goals or more.

And despite that need for finishing talent, the Islanders go into the 2023-24 season having let one of those three 20-goal scorers walk. Zach Parise’s 21 goals in 2022-23 evaporate in one of only two departures on the team, and in his place are two forwards that combined for 12 last season. New York is probably hoping a full season of Horvat will replace that, and Parise wasn’t likely to repeat his output at 39 years old, but it goes to show the continuing problem of why the Isles have been stuck in mediocrity for a couple of seasons now. They lack the talent outside of Brock Nelson, Mat Barzal, Bo Horvat, and Noah Dobson to truly compete in the league, as even at the height of their defensive system in 2020 and 2021, their kryptonite was always a Tampa Bay Lightning team that countered their defense and beat them with offense.

DEFENSE

So how can I say that the Islanders’ offense was better than their defense but still mediocre? It should just go to show how bad their defense was in 2022-23. Yes, they did sit fifth in goals against per game with 2.65 and in 5v5 goals against per 60 with 2.16, but that wasn’t due to their defensive play. A look at their underlying numbers shows that they were 19th in 5v5 expected goals against per 60 with 2.74, not horrible but far from numbers you’d expect from a top-five goals-against team. There was one big factor that resulted in their great goals against numbers (which we’ll get to in a moment), but their on-ice play was worthy of their mediocre record last year.

And as is tradition with a team run by Lamoriello, it’s almost the exact same group returning in 2023-24. The Islanders’ two changes came from the forward group, and neither Julien Gauthier nor Karson Kuhlman provided much help on the defensive end, although New York did at least get rid of one of their worst defensive forwards in Bailey. The blueline will be the exact same group which is a big concern if you want to see some improvement on the defensive end, although they can at least see some improvement internally if Ryan Pulock bounces back from a rough 2022-23 season. The Isles making some kind of a change to improve their defense would have been a smart move in the offseason, but they didn’t, so they’ll have to hope that either Pulock will improve or that a certain somebody will bail them out again.

GOALTENDING

Ok, it’s time to stop beating around the bush. There’s one big reason why the Islanders made the playoffs last year, and it was their goaltending. Not that they were a really bad team, but the only reason they looked better than mediocre was because of Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov. While Linus Ullmark had a fantastic season, Sorokin should have been the Vezina winner for how much he did to keep his team in every game, and behind a significantly worse team than the Boston Bruins. He led the league in both 5v5 delta Fenwick save percentage and 5v5 goals saved above expected and posted a .924 save percentage despite facing more difficult shot quality than a lot of the other top goalies this season. Varlamov was also a strong backup option with a .916 save percentage, and he gave the Isles the option to rest Sorokin when they needed to. They were arguably the best 1-2 punch in net in the NHL last season, right up there with Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman in Boston.

Sorokin and Varlamov return this season, and while I question the logic of giving a 35-year-old backup goalie a four-year contract, Sorokin and Varlamov will likely provide that same solidity in net for 2023-24. With the few changes in front of them, it’s likely going to be needed, as both goalies will need to play similarly to last year just to keep the Islanders in the playoff hunt all year. Sorokin has reached the point where he’s one of the few goalies in the league that can be consistent year after year, but Varlamov doesn’t come with the same certainty at his age, so if he falters, Sorokin may need to be leaned on more, which could tire him out. And with goaltending being the volatile position that it is, relying on it can sometimes pay off in spades or it can burn your team, so New York better hope that these two can repeat their success if they want any chance of being competitive.

COACHING

The biggest concern going into the 2022-23 season for the Islanders was whether incoming head coach Lambert would be able to replicate or even improve upon the system that Trotz implemented. While the Islanders did improve on their 2021-22 season and make the playoffs, it’s easy to see that it had more to do with their third-ranked team save percentage than due to their offense or their defense. A 49.69% 5v5 shot attempt share and a 50.42% 5v5 expected goal share in their first season under Lambert are not the kinds of numbers that will overwhelm teams. If the Isles want to have any chance of being a Cup contender in their closing window with the roster that they have right now, they’ll need a Trotz-esque system to make them tough to play against, and I’m not sure if Lambert is the guy to implement that system.

ROOKIES

Since the Islanders decided to not make a lot of changes to their NHL roster, perhaps they are hoping they can graduate some of their younger players and let them make an impact. Unfortunately, after years of offloading draft capital to overpay for mediocre players in trades or to help them offload the numerous bad contracts that plague this team, and then missing on the few picks they had left, there isn’t a lot to pick from, especially if they want high-end talent.

If anyone makes the Islanders out of training camp or during the season, it will likely be William Dufour upfront or Samuel Bolduc on the back end. Both already got into a few NHL games last season, and while they didn’t blow anyone out of the water, they didn’t look completely out of place either. That said, neither of them has the kind of upside the Islanders need to bolster their roster and be more than a middling squad, so I wouldn’t put all my eggs in those baskets if I were Lamoriello.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. What result will running the same team back (again) get this season? If you take a look at the 2020-21 Islanders, which was the team that last went to the final four, 16 players still remain from that same squad going into this season. Heck, six players were on this team 10 years ago. This group has stuck together and had their success at one point, but after two straight seasons of mediocrity, it might be time to move on if New York is stuck in the murky middle again. Will things finally change or is this aging core past its prime?

2. How long is Lou Lamoriello’s leash on Long Island? Lamoriello enters his sixth season as the general manager of the Islanders, and while they managed five playoff series wins in their first three seasons (six if you include the 2020 play-in series), the last two have really exposed Lamoriello’s team-building abilities to be mediocre at best. He got rid of his one scapegoat in Barry Trotz last season and it paid off with a first-round appearance, but if they find themselves outside of the playoffs again, could that be it for Lou? There looks to be plenty of competition on the lower end of the Eastern playoff picture, so not making any more changes could prove to be a costly mistake for the the Islanders and Lamoriello.

3. Will Mat Barzal and Bo Horvat live up to their new contracts? The Isles's top two centers both come into the new season with brand new deals, with Barzal making $9.15M while Horvat has $8.5M. Many consider both contracts to be overpayments – considering that Barzal hasn’t surpassed 62 points in a season since his spectacular rookie season and Horvat was on a 51-goal pace in Vancouver and only managed seven goals in 31 games with the Islanders. The duo is going to take up 21.2% of New York’s salary cap, so will Barzal and Horvat actually be worth that money or will they be two more ugly contracts signed by Lamoriello?

PREDICTION

The Islanders will likely only go as far as Sorokin can take them, and that may still be enough to make the playoffs. But the Eastern Conference is getting stronger, and the Isles will have a lot more competition to deal with, which is why it’s harder to see them sneaking into the playoffs again in 2023-24. Along with most of the same teams from last year in the playoffs, Pittsburgh made some big moves, Buffalo has plenty of momentum from last season, Ottawa seems to be on the precipice of finally breaking out, and even teams like Detroit, Washington, and Columbus could somewhat conceivably slip in, or at least put up enough of a fight to slow the Islanders down. At the very least, there’s only a few teams that look like a guarantee to make the playoffs, so New York will be fighting with a lot of teams down in the bubble tier, and they likely have the goaltending to steal a few more wins than the rest of them. Ultimately, I think they miss out on the playoffs this season, but they won’t go down easily, either.

_____