Yet another night where the New York Islanders controlled the run of play as far as the underlying numbers show, and it meant absolutely nothing. Aside from shooting more—mostly from the perimeter, I guess looking for tips if we’re being charitable but not often finding them and instead sending muffins into the goalie’s glove—this looks just like year’s team, except they have an even worse scoring problem.
The penalty kill also might be even worse than last year. And as previously noted, the Islanders have blown 90% of the leads they’ve gotten so far. They keep dropping points to the teams they should beat, games where you look back later in the season and say “Man, if only they closed out that game against the Devils instead of somehow snatching a regulation loss out of it, or the Sharks game at home that went from 4-1 to 4-4 in six minutes and then a 5-4 OT loss, they’d be in a lot better shape.