LAST SEASON
The New York Islanders went into 2023-24 looking to take their first real step forward since Lou Lamoriello’s controversial dismissal of head coach Barry Trotz in 2022. That improvement did not come under Lane Lambert.
The former Trotz protege maintained his predecessor’s conservative approach to offense with none of the defensive organization; the Islanders were 24th in scoring defense and two points out of the playoffs when Lambert got the ax on January 20.
Hall-of-Fame goaltender and notorious firebrand Patrick Roy stepped in to inject discipline and identity into the stagnant organization. Steering a deeply flawed roster to a 20-12-5 record was enough to secure third place in a weak Metropolitan Division, but the Isles were no match for the Carolina Hurricanes, who booted them out of the postseason in 5 games.
Noah Dobson’s emergence as a superstar (70 P in 79 GP, team-high 180 blocks) on the blue line, Mat Barzal’s increased aggressiveness (career-high 23 G, 240 S), and the team’s improved underlying metrics under Roy were all encouraging signs. Will they be enough to vault the aging, capped-out Islanders back into the second round in 2025?
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
Marcus Hogberg, G
Maxim Tsyplakov, RW
Anthony Duclair, LW
Fredrik Karlstrom, C
Departures
Robert Bortuzzo, D (Uta)
Ken Appleby, G (AHL)
Cal Clutterbuck, RW (UFA)
Matt Martin, LW (UFA)
Sebastian Aho, D (Pit)
Ruslan Iskhakov, C (KHL)
OFFENSE
The Islanders finished in the bottom 12 of scoring offense for the sixth-straight season in 2023-24, with grinder Casey Cizikas and journeyman Husdon Fasching featuring in the top six by the end of the year.
Luckily for Roy, Lamoriello provided the lineup with a much-needed offseason facelift on a budget.
Anthony Duclair proved he can still get it done in a top-six role after joining the Tampa Bay Lightning (8 G, 15 P in 17 GP for TB) at the 2024 trade deadline. The speedster finally got some job security in Long Island after representing eight teams in ten years.
Consistency has always been an issue for ‘Duke,’ but pairing him with an elite playmaker like Barzal (57 A in 80 GP) could give the Islanders a new dimension on the rush. They will likely flank Bo Horvat, a physical two-way center whose knack for greasy goals (33 G in 81 GP) drastically improved New York’s power play last season. All Horvat and Barzal were missing in 2023-24 was a productive left wing. Could Duclair’s arrival complete one of the division’s best lines?
Veteran snipers Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri also lacked a consistent third linemate in 2023-24. Perhaps hockey’s most underrated forward, Nelson notched a third straight 34-goal campaign. Palmieri, meanwhile, turned back the clock to produce his strongest effort (30G, 54 P in 82 GP) since his age-24 season. The American duo could be joined by debuting power forward Maxim Tsyplakov, who busted out for 31 KHL goals last season with Spartak Moscow. That was the coveted international free agent’s first standout season in his native Russia, so there will be intrigue around his adjustment to the North American game.
Captain Anders Lee, penalty killer J-G Pageau, and rangy skill player Pierre Engvall found some chemistry in the postseason (61.95% of expected goals) and could reunite on the third line to start the year. Lee (20 G, 37 P in 81 GP) has lost a step, but he’s still a gritty net-front presence on his worst day.
Dobson is the main event on the blue line after last season’s 70-point outburst gave him a third-consecutive 49-point season, but Mike Reilly is also a power play option; he was quietly excellent as a down-lineup puck mover (24 P, 55.14% of expected goals in 59 GP).
DEFENSE
The Islanders’ 19th-ranked scoring defense was already shocking by their standards (they hadn’t finished lower than 10th since Doug Weight was coach), but things could have been so much worse without Dobson and his on-and-off partner Alexander Romanov. New York cycled through 10 different defensemen last season, and only Romanov (81) and Dobson (79) managed to appear in more than 59 contests.
Dobson will be a pillar on this team’s blue line for the next decade, but Romanov’s contributions shouldn’t be overlooked. The Russian is a crunching defensive defenseman who produced break-even metrics alongside both Dobson and Ryan Pulock. He posted a +23 rating for a team that was outscored by 17 on the season.
Elsewhere, Pulock and Adam Pelech, once a dominant two-way duo for the club, hardly played together until the postseason. When Roy got the band back together in the playoffs, Carolina out-chanced them 23-35. Perhaps Pelech would be best off using his shutdown sensibilities to cover for Dobson’s so-so defense while Pulock and Romanov link up on a big, physical second pair. Both units worked well last season, but to bring them back, the veterans must stay healthy: they missed 24 games apiece in 2023-24.
Another player who struggled with injury last season was Scott Mayfield, a stay-at-home defenseman in the first season of a baffling seven-year extension. Mayfield’s rough campaign did little to assuage the skepticism around his contract; his 42.58% share of high-danger chances was the worst on the team among full-time players. The big man deserves some slack for playing on a busted ankle, though, and he produced decent results with the mobile Mike Reilly. The two are a stylistic match that could do well in sheltered minutes.
Pageau and Cizikas remain tough matchup centers with elite numbers in the faceoff dot. Further up the lineup, Horvat can bring it on ‘D’ while providing 30-goal scoring pop.
GOALTENDING
Posting a .908 SV% while facing the second-most shots in the NHL would be an achievement for most goalies, but Ilya Sorokin is not most goalies. A year ago, he was arguably the best shot-stopper on the planet, having posted a dizzying .924 SV% and 2.37 GAA in two years as a starter behind the bang-average Islanders (88.5 points per season from 2021-23). In 2023-24, he looked burnt out in the second half, surrendering over 3 goals per game and losing his job just in time for the playoffs.
Now, Sorokin has a point to prove for the first time in his professional career. He’d never been less than dominant before last season, and if he gets back to his peerless best in 2024-25, the Isles will be a very tough out.
Netminders of Sorokin’s caliber rarely ever lose the crease in crunch time, but no one could gripe with Roy’s decision to ride Semyon Varlamov into the postseason.
Though Varlamov and Roy are old friends from their Colorado days, the 36-year-old didn’t need any favoritism to wrest the cage from Sorokin down the stretch; after March 1, he went 8-1-1 with a 2.09 GAA and .930 SV%. There isn’t a more pedigreed full-time backup in the NHL today.
COACHING
Nearly a decade after he quit the Colorado Avalanche in the middle of the 2016 offseason, Patrick Roy forced his way back into the NHL coaching landscape after steering the Quebec Remparts to the 2023 Memorial Cup. Roy got the Islanders’ defense back on track and secured playoff hockey, but he still has major challenges to navigate in Year 2 behind the bench at UBS Arena.
The first is sorting out the team’s penalty kill. Though New York was a significantly more disciplined team after appointing Roy, their PK somehow got even worse (69%, 32nd) than it was under Lambert (73%, 27th). Mayfield and Pelech only managed 252 combined minutes on the kill in 2023-24, down from 378 in 2022-23; getting them healthy would immediately give the unit a boost.
Another will be coexisting with Sorokin. The goalie is the organization’s most important asset, and, though he lost the cage to Varlamov fair and square, it was wince-inducing to see the superstar netminder slumped over after getting the hook in his sole playoff appearance.
Mending fences with Sorokin will be a significant part of Roy’s preseason itinerary. The three-time Vezina winner knows better than anyone that an unhappy star goaltender is a ticking time bomb; his falling out with Mario Tremblay changed the course of NHL history.
ROOKIES
A solid 2024 draft gave the Islanders’ pipeline a necessary boost, but it won’t pay dividends at the NHL level for another few seasons at least. Tsyplakov is the new face most likely to make an impact right away.
The lefty’s 31 tallies were the fourth-most in the notoriously stingy KHL, and he’ll fight for a spot in the top six out of the gates. “We did not sign [Tsyplakov] for [AHL] Bridgeport,” Lamoriello said. “He’s an NHL-type of player.”
Tsyplakov has the inside track to the open spot on Brock Nelson’s line, where his physicality could give Nelson and Kyle Palmieri some extra room to operate.
AHLer William Dufour’s size and shot could make him a bottom-six option should the Islanders struggle with injuries. He had a rough sophomore season (15 G, 25 P in 55 GP), but it was hard for anyone to stand out on a poor Bridgeport team.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Lou Lamoriello: Dictator for life? Lou Lamoriello has already taken his place as a monumental figure in Islanders’ history. The team has won as many series during Lou’s tenure (five) as it did from its last Cup Final appearance in 1984 until his hiring in 2018. That said, the Hall-of-Famer’s poor cap management has landed the Islanders in the no man’s land between championship contention and the draft lottery. If his seven-year, trade-protected extensions for thoroughly average players in Engvall and Mayfield didn’t get him fired, nothing will. Lamoriello has had a solid summer, but there isn’t much confidence in Long Island that he can make the most of a minor windfall next offseason.
2. Is this (finally) Mat Barzal’s year? It’s become a yearly tradition to ask if this is the season Mat Barzal’s production finally matches his otherworldly talent. Even on the cagey, conservative Islanders, it’s hard to believe someone with his skating and stickhandling has averaged just under 73 points per 82 games during his career. The biggest knock on Barzal’s game had always been his unwillingness to let the puck go, but he ended that narrative last season by firing off 240 attempts on goal, 37th-most in the NHL. Now, the challenge is finding twine on more than 9.6% of those tries. Barzal has never been an efficient scorer (10.7 career shooting %), but if he discovers his killer instinct in 2024-25, he can finally become the franchise player his ability has always suggested.
3. Who’s getting paid? The short answer is Noah Dobson. He’s already a 24-minute workhorse with elite playmaking skills. If he takes the next step in the defensive zone, he could become the Islanders’ signature player for the next decade. Dobson’s raise will cost more than $8 million, and he’s not the only key man who needs an extension. Romanov will also seek a long-term deal, and the entire second line of Tsyplakov, Nelson, and Palmieiri is out of contract next summer. Lou has painted himself into a corner, and if he wants to drop Pageau or Lee to free up cap space, it will cost him big time.
PREDICTION
Between Barry Trotz’s enduring on-ice footprint and Lou Lamoriello’s inability (and unwillingness) to seriously alter the roster, the New York Islanders are not an exciting team. They haven’t needed to be to make the playoffs in five of the last six seasons. Their slightly modified forward group should keep them there in 2024-25 if the blue line can stay healthy and Sorokin returns to form. They won’t finish in a division spot this time around, but that won’t matter if they can get back to grinding out series wins under Patrick Roy.