As a team that has been to the Stanley Cup Semifinals in back-to-back seasons and is one of the favorites to hoist the Cup this season, starting off 1-2-1 was not the way that the Islanders envisioned coming out of the gates. And judging by the reaction on social media after the first few games, there were some residents of Islanders Country that were ready to press the panic button.
But that concern after a 1-2-1 start to the season diminished a bit after the Islanders concluded the first leg of their season-opening 13-game road trip with back-to-back wins in Arizona and Las Vegas, and bring a 3-2-1 record into Saturday's contest against the Predators in Nashville.
How were the Islanders able to start finding their game before coming home for five days?
"I think our mindset is better than it was (at the start of the season)," said Head Coach Barry Trotz. "I thought we had a tremendous training camp and we were really good out of the gates with the first exhibition game. The longer we played through the exhibition schedule the worse we seemed to get."
The Islanders were back on the ice Thursday at Northwell Health Ice Center in East Meadow after three days off following their return home from Las Vegas, and they will practice again on Friday before departing for Nashville. Having some time off gave the Islanders a chance to recharge their batteries, but they are clearly in a better place mentally and physically now than at the start of the season.
The Islanders are trending in the right direction, but they are not quite where the want to be just yet.
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"I think we're building towards that," said Captain Anders Lee. "I think there's obviously still a lot of work to do in places and areas that we know we can be better."
With Semyon Varlamov on injured reserve to start the season, Ilya Sorokin started all six games on the first leg of the road trip. He had two less than stellar starts in Carolina and Florida, but Sorokin rebounded with three wins in four games, including back-to-back shutouts in the last two games. He had 42 saves in the Isles' 2-0 win in Vegas on Sunday night and earned the NHL's third star of the week.
Varlamov has since been activated off of injured reserve, and that restores the Islanders' massive 1-2 punch between the pipes that was on display last season.
"I'm feeling great right now," said Varlamov. "I'm ready to go. I'm ready play a game. I didn't expect it would take so long to recover from last year. I'm glad everything is behind me right now and I'm feeling good and ready to play. I feel like I'm 100 percent and I can play this week."
The Islanders have all of the confidence in the world in Sorokin, but it's clear that the return of Varlamov is going to give the Isles another shot in the arm.
"To see Varly back and healthy…it's a long road getting back and it takes a lot of hard work," said Lee. "Just to see him get rewarded with feeling good and feeling better and better each day I know he's looking forward to being 100 percent. We're looking forward to having him back."
Varlamov is back but we still don't know when he's going to get into a game for the first time. It could be Saturday in Nashville, or perhaps the coaching staff will wait until either next Thursday in Montreal or next weekend in either Winnipeg or Minnesota.
Right now, the Islanders are keeping things close to the vest.
"We'll go into Nashville," said Trotz on Wednesday. "Obviously one of them will be in the net and we'll play it off that."
On Thursday, Trotz was asked again about when Varlamov will play.
"We'll get him in at the appropriate time," said Trotz. "He's going to travel with us."
After Friday's practice, Trotz will huddle up with his coaches to determine a starting goalie for Saturday and then they'll inform Varlamov and Sorokin of that decision.
"I don't know when I'm going to play the first game but all I know is I'm going to be ready to play and we'll go from there," said Varlamov.
Regardless of how the Islanders decide to handle their goaltending decision, the bottom line is that they more than salvaged the first part of the road trip with the way that they played in the final two games. It wasn't vintage Islanders hockey that we saw in the last two post-seasons, but it was certainly a big step forward.
At the end of the day, the last two games were a lot better than the first two, and that kind of sums up where the Islanders are right now.
"It just didn't feel good when you start 0-2 and some of our details started to lack," said Trotz. "I think the biggest thing was not a physical element but an emotional and a mental element that we had to sort of just adjust a little bit. As the trip went on, I thought we adjusted it better and better.
"(The road trip) ended on a better note than how it started," said Lee.
Without a doubt, things are trending in the right direction for the Islanders.
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