Thank You Blue And Orange

202 has been a crazy year, from a global scale, all the way down to the sports world. For the New York Islanders, it had been just as crazy of a ride. That crazy ride came to a crashing end in overtime of game six of the Eastern Conference Finals at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning (Congratulations to the Bolts). But think about that for a minute.

The 2019-2020 New York Islanders were in the Eastern Conference Finals. And two wins away from their first finals appearance since 1984. Who the hell would have thought that to happen.

Back in October, I did a season preview here on the blog, and I said that the Islanders were going to miss the playoffs, just barley. The reason I felt that was because I felt that they didn't have the scoring punch to really be able to hang with the upper tier teams in the Conference. Teams like Tampa, Boston, Carolina, Toronto ect. At the start of the year, there was the big seventeen game pint streak that kept them near the top. They had flashes after that, ones that made you think they would be able to stay right in the thick of it well into the spring. Then the wheels looked like they were starting to wobble. At the end of February, the team had hit a bad slide and fallen out of the playoff race.

Then the world got turned upside down, and for months nobody knew what was going to happen.

When the league made the announcement that the playoffs were going to be taking place in a bubble and that, with the new format, the Islanders had made it in by percentage points. I was curious to see how this was going to play out.

They got by Florida pretty easy. Then it seemed they kept it going in the win over Washington. Now it was a tough test in the series that went seven with Philadelphia. Managed to pass that too. Then it came face to face with a really good team in Tampa. That's not to say that the Panthers and Flyers weren't good teams, they were, but the Lightning were playing at a different level. The Isles had chances a plenty in the series, but couldn't take advantage of many of them.

I will say this about this hockey club. It showed a ton of heart and resilience and kept making believers out of a lot of people. They have something here that works. Everybody believes in what's going on here, and the team, in my mind, is a piece or two away from taking that next step into upper status in the Eastern Conference.

This New York Islanders hockey club brought something special to the table with this playoff run. They lifted quite a few spirits of their fans. They were the best team going in the New York/Metro area this year. It was a lot of fun hockey to watch.

Thanks for the memories and a hell of a playoff run boys!