Lane Lambert, the head coach of the NY Islanders, has struggled to reverse trends and address issues.
Let’s not act as though the New York Islanders were predicted to contend for the Stanley Cup this year; they weren’t. It was anticipated that they would be one of several teams contending for one of the two Eastern Conference Wild Card spots or third place in the Metropolitan Division.
From that vantage point, they are roughly where most of us predicted they would be after 44 games, despite going 2-6-1 in their last nine games. The issue is that things didn’t have to happen this way. It is a disgrace to head coach Lane Lambert that they are still beset by the same problems and vulnerabilities that have dogged them since the beginning of the season and are costing them points.
The Islanders are struggling in aspects of their game other than personnel. If there’s been a running criticism of the team, it’s been that they were too satisfied with their roster at the end of the previous season and decided to run it back.
When the players are committed and hold each other accountable, this group has demonstrated that they are capable of playing a more consistently structured defensive game. Although some may find it dull, it’s difficult to contest that it’s the reason the Islanders have had the most success in recent years.
The team decided to return to playing the more responsible and defensively structured style that had worked so well for them during the first three seasons under Barry Trotz after Mathew Barzal sustained an injury in mid-February of the previous season. In the end, they managed to close out the season strongly even without Barzal and secured a postseason berth in their last regular-season game.
Under Doug Weight, a terrible defensive team learned how to limit scoring opportunities and improved to become one of the league’s best at it. Even though Lambert’s teams have one of the NHL’s top goaltending tandems and a solid group of defensemen, there are hardly any similarities between those teams and the ones he led.
