When you’re stuck in a deep hole, you know it’s going to take a lot of effort and time to get out – and that’s the situation that the Islanders are in right now.
After Monday night’s 4-1 win over the Flyers at UBS Arena, the Islanders continue to trend in the right direction after a difficult start to the season. Their 2021-22 campaign started with a 13-game road trip as they waited for their new home to be completed; throw in a couple of COVID outbreaks, injuries, and multiple stops and starts to the season, and the Islanders quickly found themselves at or near the bottom of the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference standings.
“Standings are tough to look at,” said forward Casey Cizikas. “You can look at them one way and kind of be upset or you just take it game by game, and I think that’s what we’re doing here.”
That approach has helped the Islanders turn things around in recent weeks.
They have just two regulation losses in their last 14 games (since the first round of postponed games), and just completed a 5-1-1 home stand to improve to 6-6-3 at UBS Arena after losing their first seven games there. And, they have pulled to within three points of the sixth place Flyers heading into the back end of a home and home against Philadelphia Tuesday night at Wells Fargo Center.
But even with their recent surge, the Islanders are just 12-13-6 through 31 games, and they’re 16 points behind Boston for the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.
That’s still a pretty big mountain to climb, but the Islanders aren’t looking at it that way.
“I don’t think it’s overwhelming at all,” said forward Mat Barzal. “We know we have a ton of games in hand. We know there’s (51) games left in the season. This team has a lot of resilience, a lot of character, and a lot of good men in the locker room, so I think we’re not feeling overwhelmed at all.”
The Islanders have some hope of reaching the playoffs, because they’ve played the fewest games of any team in the NHL and they have games in hand on the teams they are trying to catch. They’re 16 points behind the Bruins with four games in hand, 21 points behind the Washington Capitals with eight games in hand, and 21 points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins with nine games in hand.
But all the Islanders can do right now is take care of their own business, and that means a focus on the next game and continuing to compile points in the standings.
“Each game is the most important game of the year to us right now,” said Cizikas. “At the end of the season, if we keep playing the way we are and we keep growing as a group, we’re going to like where we’re sitting.”
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Right now, the Islanders are not happy where they are because they entered this season with Stanley Cup aspirations. After back-to-back trips to the NHL’s final four, the Islanders find themselves in unchartered waters as they try to claw themselves back into playoff contention.
It doesn’t appear to be an easy task, but the Islanders seem to be very much up for the challenge.
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