ELMONT, N.Y. — They said they did a lot of good things. They said they were the better team. They said there were some bad bounces.
To which we say: Does it matter?
It’s over for the 2024-25 Islanders, who lost to the Rangers 5-1 on Tuesday.
Yes, they had the better scoring chances. Yes, they did some good things. Yes, they probably were the better team. And yes, it means exactly squat. They’ve lost four in a row, two on either side of the 4 Nations break, and given up 19 goals in those four losses. Ilya Sorokin, the one Islander who could steal points at this time of the year, was pulled on Tuesday after five Rangers goals on 11 shots.
“If I tell you he had a good game,” Patrick Roy said, “you’d tell me I’m full of —-.”
The Islanders are seven points from a playoff spot. They are four points from the bottom of the Eastern Conference. With 25 games to go and an increasing number of points and teams to overcome, that is all the discussion one needs to have.
They have been playing not just for their playoff lives these last few weeks but for the continued existence of this long-standing core. They have not quit and they have not given in to frustration, but there isn’t anything more to be done: Lou Lamoriello has said often that your team tells you what to do at the trade deadline and the Islanders have said their piece the last four games.
So what’s next?
In talking to a few people around the league over the last week, it seemed clear Lamoriello was going to take his deadline decisions as far as he could, maybe even all the way to March 7. It also seemed clear that Brock Nelson, No. 1 on The Athletic’s latest trade board, was not interested in signing an extension before the March 7 deadline. That one fact could certainly change in the next nine days but it hasn’t changed in the last seven months, so it hardly seems realistic to proceed as if Nelson would decide to commit to the Isles as they circle the drain on this season.
So Lamoriello has a choice: field offers for Nelson until next Friday and make the call then, or field offers in the coming days, take the best one and set the market for the final deadline stretch. Moving Nelson sooner rather than later would allow Lamoriello and the Islanders to get ahead of the center market, which is fairly meager this deadline season, and also prepare the team for other moves to come.
Those other moves may include Kyle Palmieri, a pending UFA, and J-G Pageau, who has a year left on his deal but would draw genuine interest due to the aforementioned lack of centers. Lamoriello could assemble some mid-round draft picks for any of the defensemen he’s collected in recent weeks — Tony DeAngelo has six points in 10 games and might entice a team that needs some depth.
Lamoriello has been patient, preferring to tell inquiring teams he has faith in his group and confidence that Nelson may want to extend. He’s been a general manager about as long as I’ve been out of grade school so it feels strange to question his course of action, but the time for patience is at an end. Even if his team coulda, woulda or shoulda, even if the Isles got hosed on Casey Cizikas’ match penalty Sunday or if they got robbed by Igor Shesterkin on Tuesday, the results are the results.
Igor Shesterkin shut down the Islanders on Tuesday with 36 saves. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
The Islanders are a .500 team with 25 games to go. They would need something like 92 points to get into the playoffs, which would mean going 17-7-1 down the stretch. If you’ve watched this team, beset by injuries and bad luck and poor special teams and scoring droughts and recently subpar goaltending, and thought the Islanders just need a few more games to get it together… well, you are a true optimist.
Lamoriello’s faith may still be strong but he must be a realist. That means not worrying about his job status beyond this season or trying hard to keep the band together. Nelson’s lack of an extension by now signals that even if he’s not traded by March 7, he’s almost certainly interested in testing the free-agent market on July 1, which absolutely necessitates making a move now.
And if you are willing to move Nelson, you could also be willing to move Palmieri, Pageau, Anders Lee and one of the over-30 defensemen among Ryan Pulock, Scott Mayfield and Adam Pelech. Mayfield, with a mere five years left on his deal after this season, was a healthy scratch on Tuesday after being healthy enough to play exactly 92 of 138 games over the last two seasons. You have to be willing to consider buying out Pierre Engvall, another seven-year mistake from two seasons ago. You might even consider buying out Mayfield.
Part of being an adept GM in today’s NHL is trying hard to reverse your mistakes. Instead of selling high on Mayfield at the 2022-23 deadline, Lamoriello extended. Instead of not being swayed by 25 good games from Engvall at the end of that same season, he extended. The cap is going up exponentially over the next three seasons but it’s the contract term that Lamoriello gave to just about every core Islander that’s causing stagnation here — so when there’s some flexibility or interest from other teams, that’s the time to strike and effect changes.
The Islanders also may not want to keep spending to the cap when the team doesn’t bring in the same money as the big-market clubs. I’ve called out owner Scott Malkin a lot in recent weeks and if his wallet isn’t ready to keep up with cap inflation, selling is imperative for yet another reason — the Islanders need to retool without piling on more salary costs and the only way to do that is to shed what they can and be shrewd about filling in the gaps.
The Islanders said the right things after Tuesday’s loss, a game in which the Rangers’ best players were either completely invisible or left with injuries. The Rangers won this game with Shesterkin, followed by a bunch of guys you’d have to look up on Hockey-Reference — Johnny Brodzinski and Urho Vaakanainen and Matt Rempe. When you’re ceding space in the slot and goals to those guys, it’s yet another flashing “SELL” sign.
“It may sound crazy to say,” Pelech said, “but I thought we did a lot of good things … I thought we outplayed them.”
True enough, I suppose. But also irrelevant. The time for “if we keep playing this way we’ll win games” was a month or two ago. The Islanders aren’t good enough or healthy enough to avoid what’s coming. Their record isn’t strong enough.
It’s over. Now comes the important part.
(Top photo: Dennis Schneidler / Imagn Images)
