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For much of the season, Barry Trotz was reluctant to play Oliver Wahlstrom with Mathew Barzal.
Though Wahlstrom’s big shot and scoring ability seemed a natural fit alongside Barzal’s playmaking, the Islanders coach harbored concerns about what it would look like on the defensive end and preferred to keep Wahlstrom alongside Jean-Gabriel Pageau, a center whose game is more defense-oriented than Barzal’s.
“My biggest fear is that, if it’s a chance-fest, then we’re gonna probably end up more on the bottom end of those a lot of times,” Trotz said Tuesday, before the Isles’ 3-0 win over the Senators.
Since he’s relented, though, the results have been there.
In 90 minutes together at five-on-five this season, Wahlstrom and Barzal have out-chanced and outscored their opposition with a 54.22 expected goals rate, per Natural Stat Trick. More specifically, the threesome Trotz has used lately — Zach Parise with the two of them — has a 61.36 expected goals rate.
It’s a small sample size, of course, and there’s still ample time for issues to form. But the early returns are that this seems to work.
“The comfort level for me is getting better,” Trotz said. “They have been dangerous. I’d like a little more production. … They’ve been getting chances, they’ve been producing that. They haven’t been giving up a lot.”
Wahlstrom’s development in particular has been ongoing this year, with the 21-year-old occasionally earning Trotz’s ire due to poor decision-making with the puck. That hasn’t been the case recently, though Trotz would like to see Wahlstrom play off Barzal more decisively.
“That’s part of the process of learning to play,” Trotz said. “Instead of going to space, he’s going maybe to support when he doesn’t have to. That’ll come as he gets to know and have more reps with Barzy and Zach.“They’ll be times where he’ll just have to lay in the weeds sometimes and wait for the puck and other times he’ll have to go and support. … There is a little bit of, I’ll say indecisiveness, where, am I shooting it or am I looking for something different? And Wally’s a shooter. We want him to shoot.”
Cal Clutterbuck missed his second straight game with injury and was described as day-to-day by Trotz. Andy Greene was back in the lineup after missing Sunday’s loss to the Flyers.
Trotz said opportunities to experiment with the lineup will likely come naturally as the season winds down, but he’s not explicitly looking to do so.
“I think the schedule and the number of games are gonna force me to experiment,” he said.
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