A three-game losing streak heading into tonight’s game against the conference leader puts the season on thin ice.
During the Islanders’ five-goal second-period implosion in their 8-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday night at UBS Arena, there was a camera shot of Islanders head coach Patrick Roy expressing an air of disgust. He behaved as if he were frustrated that his train was delayed in arriving at his destination.
Things didn’t get any better–they got worse–with the Islanders’ season after a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Friday night at UBS Arena. That puts even more pressure on winning Saturday night’s game in Raleigh to play the Eastern Conference-leading Carolina Hurricanes (48-21-6, 102 points). With five games left in the regular season, the 42-30-5 Islanders (89 points) are now only one point ahead of a quadruple set of Eastern rivals (Ottawa, Detroit, Columbus, and Philadelphia) for the 7th and 8th playoff spots.
A late-season swoon adds flames to the fire for Roy, whose job appears to be on the line. Islanders president of hockey operations Mathieu Darche inherited this head coach. He gave Roy a year to see if this working relationship could work. At this point, Darche had to see enough to make an evaluation.
Roy seems to be making the case that he should not be the head coach next season. Quite frankly, it’s surprising that the head coach somehow stayed on after the new president of hockey operations was hired this past offseason. Roy knew he was coaching for his job this season. He has been in the game long enough to know that new general managers hire their own guy to execute their vision, and his team is not helping Roy’s cause after another listless performance.
Mathieu Darche (photo courtesy HockeyFeed)
To make matters worse, his team had the advantage Friday night after two days off, and the Flyers were coming off a 4-2 home loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night. Instead, NY started the game poorly, trailing 2-0 after the first period. The score could have been 5-0 if Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin had not made a glove save and a beneath-the-glove save in the first few minutes of the game.
The defense once again turned out to be a problem for the Islanders. The Flyers were outskating them, and they created 2-on-1 and 3-on-1 opportunities in that period. There was no way Sorokin would keep up for too long. Eventually, it caught up with the Islanders. The Islanders sprayed only two shots on goal in the first period, the period in which the Islanders lost this game.
Truth be told, the Islanders overachieved all season, and eventually, reality caught up with the team. An 82-game season exposed their flaws, including struggles to score at times and a defense that didn’t play in front of Sorokin.
Playing above expectations won’t save Roy in the end, and he knows it. Hockey head coaches tend to lose their effectiveness in coaching their players, and it could be that Roy may reach that point based on how the Islanders played these last two weeks. It appears the players stopped listening to him, with these performances at this critical juncture of the season.
What’s next? I think it’s time to change head coaches and break up the roster by getting rid of the veterans who have done nothing but lose, even after reaching the Eastern Conference finals a couple of times. It’s better to have a young up-and-coming coach learning on the job as the head coach for Matthew Schaefer, Cal Ritchie, Emil Heineman, Max Shabanov, and other young prospects in the farm system.
Losing three in a row (two at home) when the season is on the line doesn’t augur well for a narrative change, especially with a game tonight against the conference’s best club. The only positive left is that the four remaining games are all at home. Still, it’s likely that the countdown of Roy’s days as the Islanders’ head coach will continue.
