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The Islanders played their 54th game of the season Thursday night when they hosted the Blue Jackets. Not that they’re counting, but the first 53 feel like they took quite a while.
“We want to do better, but it’s been a very mentally sort of crushing year so far,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said following practice on Tuesday. “And this group has ground really hard for two years. A little more than actually since I got here I’ve demanded a lot, they’ve changed the way they’ve played and this year has been very difficult.”
Recently, Trotz said, he spoke to Lightning coach Jon Cooper, who compared the current Islanders season to when his own team missed the playoffs in 2017 following two years in which they lost the Stanley Cup final and the conference finals.
The Islanders came into the year as one of the favorites for the Cup after two straight NHL semifinal runs, but everything from their on-ice play to external factors have resulted in the team being out of the playoff race with nearly 30 games left in the regular season.
A 13-game road trip to open the season, followed by a COVID-19 outbreak and a badly uneven schedule got things off on the wrong foot. But since those factors normalized, the Islanders have failed to get back to their game with any kind of consistency. They slowly dropped out of the race as it became clear that they were a group that would struggle to get over .500.
As a result, a season that was supposed to be something of a celebration — for a newly built and long-awaited arena and perhaps for a Stanley Cup the organization has waited nearly 40 years to hoist — has turned into a disaster.
“[Cooper] says it didn’t matter which way they turned, it just seemed to blow up in their face,” Trotz said. “We’ve had a lot of that and there’s no excuses. It’s just — it’s happened and it hasn’t been a great season for us. But I can assure you that the guys in that room care a lot. They care about the press, they care about each other. They care about the fans, they care about everything.”
Now, as the trade deadline looms, the Islanders are facing a packed schedule in which they won’t get two consecutive days without a game until April 6-7. That is not the sort of situation that will ease their reality.
“I try to put it into perspective for all you, you’ve got a test, you get wound up for that test and you study for that test and you get jacked up,” Trotz said. “Well we get 29 of them coming up in 49 days. Emotionally that’s hard, especially if it’s not going your way.”
Trotz liked that his team “had a little f-u in their game” on Monday in a 5-4 loss to the Avalanche, but that did nothing but keep their season on the same track.
“It’s hard,” Brock Nelson said. “Ups and downs, expectations from the group, from outside. I think everybody’s aware of all of that. And maybe it adds a little bit of emotion and pressure, but that’s just part of the job and you have to find a way to fight through that and just worry about playing hockey.
“And I think our group’s done a pretty good job of that. I don’t think that means we’re content with where we are. I think everybody’s upset, wants to turn it, wants to get better and get on a roll.”
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