If anybody heard the last episode of the show, you heard my rant about the lack of effort and pure frustration with the product on the ice the last couple of weeks. Yes, as of this writing, the Islanders are still in a Wild Card spot. They're tied with the Blue Jackets at 78 points, both are three up on Carolina, four up on the Rangers and five up on Florida. All this with a little over a month to play. But if you look back around the all star break, the Islanders were 29-15-5. Six wins since then and only two since the middle of February. I'm sorry but what's on the ice right now isn't going to cut it.
Usually, the Islanders hit a rough patch like this in the beginning of the season and fight their way back, if they even hit that patch at all. This couldn't come at a worse time. You can see, just by watching, the impact on not having Casey Cizikas, who's got no timetable on his return from a leg injury. Now the team is also going to miss Johnny Boychuk, who needed 90 stitches to repair getting cut by a skate against Montreal last night. This is limiting a bit of an already banged up defense. There's a lot more to it then that.
Lets start in net. Greiss and Varlamov have played really well at times, and there's also times like last night against Montreal where they looked average at best. To be fair, I can't put all the blame on Greiss because his teammates made some bad mental mistakes in front of him. Bad turnovers, not skating to clear the puck, just stuff you would like to think you'd see a hockey team do. Play in the defensive end is getting lazy.
If you think that's bad, the offensive jump isn't really there. Sure it's showed up twice recently, in wins over San Jose and Detroit and a comeback to get a point out of the Rangers. But since about Valentines day, the offense has, for the most part, been MIA. It's either not skating with any urgency or too many damn passes. I've lost count how many times over the last couple of weeks I've been yelling at the TV that they've been over passing and not shooting anywhere near what they should. I'm sure there's a level of frustration that has to be getting to the players by now, but it sure as hell isn't showing in any semblence of urgency the last few games. They've been totally shut down since the end of the 1st against the Blues in St Louis last week.
For a team that had so much promise going into this year, and after the winning streak no less, to see what its turning into now is a crying shame. I, like anybody else who roots for a sports team with a passion, wants to see it succeed. Or at the very least be competitive. I haven't seen anything close to that over the last three games and its the wrong time of the year to be hitting the slide. There's 17 games left to go in the regular season. If the Islanders want to have any hope at all of playing spring hockey at Nassau Coliseum this year, they had better wake the hell up and start putting pucks on net. Or this will leave a very bitter taste in their mouth going into next year.
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