Why the Islanders’ recent string of points shows they might be close to figuring it out

Lane Lambert laughed when the question was asked because there wasn’t much else to do.

As he’d pointed out toward the end of his press conference following Wednesday’s practice, the Islanders have gotten points in nine of their past 10 games. Unlike approximately 99 percent of those scenarios, though, the coach was not answering questions about how well his team was playing but about all the opportunities they had squandered. 

Have the past 10 games, over which the Islanders hold a 5-1-4 record, felt like a success to him?

“I guess part of it does, for sure, because we’ve done so many positive things,” Lambert said. “If we clean up an area [the third period] which clearly needs to be cleaned up — and we will — there’s a lot of positives to build on.”

It’s pretty hard to say the Islanders have played great because they have left so many points on the table, including in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Sharks on Tuesday. But 14 out of 20 possible points is, well, pretty good.

And the Islanders (10-7-7) are just one point behind Philadelphia or Toronto for a playoff spot. That is mostly off the back of the Islanders playing an excellent first 40 minutes, or in the case of Tuesday, 45 minutes.

It’s not really clear whether the Islanders are on the verge of figuring it out and going on a tear or barely holding it together and about to fall apart. But Lambert — no surprise — made the case for optimism Wednesday.

In the spirit of a .700 points percentage over the past 10 games, let’s build on it here.

The top six is buzzing

We wrote before the season that there was a real chance of the Islanders having two high-end scoring lines. Right now, that looks to be coming to fruition.

The measure we used for that was playing over 300 minutes together with over 50 percent of both expected and actual goals.

The second line of Pierre Engvall, Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri is well on its way, having been together for all but one of the first 24 matches. Already, Engvall-Nelson-Palmieri has played 244:36, outscoring opposition 12-6 with a 50.93 expected goals rate, per Natural Stat Trick.

The first line is a little behind that pace, mostly because Simon Holmstrom and Anders Lee have taken turns on Bo Horvat’s wing. But Lee, Horvat and Mathew Barzal have started nine games together and combined for 98:48, with a 5-4 goals margin and 49.82 expected goals rate. That trio started slow, but has found some real momentum lately thanks to Barzal, who has played some of his best hockey in recent memory.

Barzal is on a point-per-game pace. Nelson looks set to make a run at 40 goals again. Horvat has found his game after a rough start to his Islanders career. That’s all going to plan.

The power play has figured it out

The biggest reason the Islanders couldn’t get over the hump last season was their 15.77 percent conversion rate on the power play, which ranked 30th in the league. That has ballooned by nearly 10 percent this season with the only personnel change to the top unit being Palmieri replacing Lee at the netfront, and the Islanders ranked seventh league-wide at five-on-four heading into Wednesday.

There is a confidence there that did not exist a season ago. Even on what was shaping up to be a sloppy two minutes Tuesday as the Islanders struggled to enter the offensive zone after a Kyle Burroughs hooking call in the second period, they made something happen, with Nelson beating Kaapo Kahkonen clean from the right circle as soon as he got a chance.

“I think from training camp, start of the year, we’ve been really diligent with it, getting a lot of work in,” Noah Dobson said. “We’ve just been executing, getting chances and we’re capitalizing.”

Especially after the addition of Horvat, it always seemed last season like the unit was severely underperforming its talent. That went in particular for Dobson, whose confidence running the top unit waned until he was finally demoted off it in the last game of the playoffs against Carolina.

Dobson already has 11 points on the power play this season — over half his total of 19 from last season. His confidence has completely recovered at five-on-four and so has the rest of the top unit’s.

The penalty kill is turning a corner

The one good thing, sort of, to say about the way the Islanders lost to San Jose is that they didn’t lose it on the penalty kill.

In fact, after Casey Cizikas went off for high-sticking early in the third period, the Islanders not only killed the penalty but scored shorthanded, with Holmstrom assisting Mike Reilly right before the power play expired.

The Islanders still have a long way to go before the top-line number starts to look better, but over their past eight games, they’ve held opponents to just 2-of-19 on the power play. And, notably, one of the two goals came with the Islanders down to three-on-four — a far tougher situation to defend than four-on-five.

It’s far from perfect — the Islanders are still negating their own power plays too much, including the two penalties that led to that three-on-four situation in New Jersey on Nov. 28. But over that eight-game span, the Islanders have scored shorthanded as often as they have given up power play goals.

After how poor the PK looked a few weeks ago, that is a pretty big sign of progress.

The goaltending is (still) really good

It’s true that Ilya Sorokin hasn’t quite found his 2022-23 level, but replicating what he did over 62 games last season might be nearly impossible.

Sorokin has had a frustrating go of it, getting the short end of the stick in six overtime losses. But even the version of him that’s been less than perfect still has a .911 save percentage and 5.85 goals saved above expected, per Evolving Hockey’s count.

Semyon Varlamov has picked up the slack, too, if that construction is even appropriate to use here. Turns out, Lou Lamoriello knew what he was doing in keeping the backup netminder, who has turned in a .926 save percentage over eight starts.

The goaltending is doing what the Islanders need it to do: keeping them in games pretty much every night. No worries there.

So when will all this start translating into more wins?

The simple answer is, when the Islanders start playing the last 20 minutes more like they’ve been playing the first 40.

Thing is, it’s not just empty words when they say they’re capable — it’s true. The Islanders have been pretty far from perfect, but they are better than blowing the sort of leads they’ve blown this season, and they know it.

“You have to be very, very careful of the negatives getting in the way of the positives here,” Lambert said. “We’ve had points in nine of 10 games and I get it, it’s skewed because of the overtime or shootout losses.

“But you gotta be very, very careful with the negativity outweighing the positives, and there’s a lot of positives and our guys are working. I give our guys full credit.”