The New York Islanders may have found new life under Patrick Roy

I believe I owe New York Islanders fans an apology.

I’m fully willing to admit that I was wrong about the hiring of Patrick Roy. I still stand by my logic, especially when Lou Lamoriello has shown his age in recent seasons at the helm of the team, but I guess a broken clock is still right twice a day.

When the Islanders fired Lane Lambert on January 20th and hired Roy to take over as head coach, it reeked of desperation. For the third straight season, the Islanders were stuck in a state of seemingly perpetual ineptitude, no longer the elite defensive team that went to back-to-back Conference Finals, but instead an average team propped up by elite goaltending from Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov. While it’d hard to believe that a general manager with Lamoriello’s legacy could be fired, it really felt like his job would be next if Roy didn’t work out.

And personally, I’ve always been surprised that Lamoriello has lasted this long. After all, the success of those Islanders teams in 2020 and 2021 had very little to do with Lamoriello’s acquisitions, and more that then-head coach Barry Trotz had the ability to turn the mediocre players locked up and littered throughout the lineup into defensive machines. I touched on it with The Leafs Nation at the height of the Islanders’ success, and while it wasn’t exactly well-received, it certainly showcased that nearly every Islanders player, whether they were with the team before Trotz’s hiring or brought in externally, improved under Trotz.

So when Lamoriello fired Trotz in 2022, I figured his flaws would be exposed. The man who was masquerading most of Lou’s terrible decisions and turning it into one of the most disciplined and structured systems in the league was gone, so it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the team started to look more like the sum of its parts.

And under Lambert, they certainly did. After four seasons under Trotz that saw them have a 5v5 expected goals against per 60 of 2.38, they dropped to 2.75 under Lambert. What’s even more interesting is seeing how much some of the players saw their defensive play decline once the coaches switched over. Actually, some is an understatement. Almost every player allowed more expected goals under Lambert than they did under Trotz, except for Sebastian Aho, who was the only player with bad metrics under Trotz.

Player	5v5 xGA/60 under Trotz	5v5 xGA/60 under Lambert	Difference
Adam Pelech	2.15	2.58	+0.43
Anders Lee	2.6	2.76	+0.16
Brock Nelson	2.44	2.99	+0.55
Cal Clutterbuck	1.99	2.5	+0.51
Casey Cizikas	2.06	2.63	+0.57
Jean-Gabriel Pageau	2.38	2.72	+0.34
Kyle Palmieri	2.48	2.79	+0.31
Mathew Barzal	2.52	2.76	+0.24
Matt Martin	2.03	2.54	+0.51
Noah Dobson	2.47	2.87	+0.4
Ryan Pulock	2.26	2.85	+0.59
Scott Mayfield	2.25	2.61	+0.36
Sebastian Aho	2.83	2.67	-0.16

When the difference in play is this staggering across the board, you know it’s a coaching problem, or in this case, a coaching absence problem. Trotz was the glue that held that team together, and the only reason the team showed any semblance of competitiveness under Lambert was because they had the third-highest save percentage during his tenure.

So when Roy was announced as Lambert’s replacement, I didn’t see a lot of hope for this team to ever return to that defensive form. While some people remember Roy as the coach that sparked a young, underdog Colorado Avalanche team in 2013-14 to first place in the Western Conference in his debut season, I remembered that team as that year’s outlier, as they were the worst playoff team in both expected goals and shot attempt share that season, and then they naturally regressed after that. In Roy’s three seasons in Colorado from 2013 to 2016, they had the second-worst 5v5 expected goal share at 44.35% and shot attempt share at 44.76%. That did not sound like an improvement behind the bench for a team that really needed some strong coaching.

And now, two months removed from Roy’s debut as the Isles head coach, I am happy to admit that I may have been wrong. Yes, their 10-9-4 record doesn’t exactly scream success, but under the hood, these look just like Trotz’s Islanders, if not better.

Since Roy took over as head coach, the Isles are tied for third with the Minnesota Wild in 5v5 xGA/60 with 2.14, a significant jump from a tie with the Washington Capitals for the sixth-worst 5v5 xGA/60 with 2.8 during Lambert’s tenure this season. That is an almost unthinkable change in play in such a short span of time for a team that has kept mostly the same roster, and yet Roy has done it. And much like how players joining Trotz’s system saw improvement, and how players going from Trotz to Lambert saw their play drop, every player that has played at least 10 games under Roy are seeing it improve again.

Player	5v5 xGA/60 under Lambert	5v5 xGA/60 under Roy	Difference
Adam Pelech	2.58	2.25	-0.33
Alexander Romanov	2.85	2.43	-0.42
Anders Lee	2.76	1.81	-0.95
Bo Horvat	2.8	2.08	-0.72
Brock Nelson	2.99	2.27	-0.72
Cal Clutterbuck	2.5	1.83	-0.67
Casey Cizikas	2.63	2.03	-0.6
Jean-Gabriel Pageau	2.72	2.49	-0.23
Kyle Palmieri	2.79	2.34	-0.45
Mathew Barzal	2.76	2.08	-0.68
Matt Martin	2.54	1.83	-0.71
Mike Reilly	2.62	1.77	-0.85
Noah Dobson	2.87	2.3	-0.57
Pierre Engvall	2.87	1.81	-1.06
Ryan Pulock	2.85	2.01	-0.84
Scott Mayfield	2.61	2.04	-0.57
Sebastian Aho	2.67	1.98	-0.69
Simon Holmstrom	2.61	2.39	-0.22

Even if you believe numbers aren’t everything, you have to admit, when every player has seen positive change under a new head coach, that’s probably a sign that he’s doing his job well.

Now, what is it that he’s doing that has helped them improve? That’s admittedly where my expertise falls short. Maybe the strategies that didn’t work with the 2013-16 Avs teams just happens to work for this Isles team? Maybe in the nearly eight years since he’s last been behind an NHL bench, he’s improved on his tactics so that they work better with the modern NHL game? Or maybe he came into this job with enough sense to see what worked for the team in 2020 and 2021 and decided “let’s just go back to that”?

What matters is that, for the time being, it’s working, and while the Isles aren’t quite being rewarded for the success just yet, that should hopefully come in due time, even if it doesn’t bare a playoff spot for them this season.

And if they sneak into the playoffs, they have the potential to be a nightmare matchup for most teams in the first round. Just look at the two teams currently holding down the top Division spots in the Eastern Conference: the Boston Bruins and the New York Rangers. Both teams have the firepower to beat their opponents and both have the goaltending, but both have middling to disastrous defensive metrics, which very much evens the score for an Isles squad with a mediocre offense and is currently playing elite defensively. It was the type of matchup the Islanders feasted on in those 2020 and 2021 runs, as they would take advantage of their opponents’ weak defense to finish their chances, and then shut them down at the other end, and it’s one they could get again this season.

Except this time, there’s two major differences that could help this Isles squad. While the 2021 team had Sorokin, he wasn’t this Sorokin that can be the best in the game, and he would easily matchup with Igor Shesterkin or whoever the Bruins threw in, and likely best Sergei Bobrovsky and whoever the Carolina Hurricanes threw out. Along with that, Barzal wasn’t quite the dynamic forward in 2020 and 2021 that he is right now, and he makes the Isles even more dangerous on the attack, and they have Bo Horvat there to finish those chances as well.

All in all, the Isles have the opportunity to cause some major headaches this postseason for whatever team they play in the first round, and it’s largely in-part to rediscovering the game that made them so successful in 2020 and 2021 now that Roy has taken over as head coach. But, they still have to make the playoffs first, and it’s turning into a tight race to get those final spots.