Islanders are feeling emboldened with success in playoffs
Yes, they’ve won just a single playoff series since 1993, but the New York Islanders are no longer acting and playing as if they don’t belong in the Stanley Cup tournament.
And with a bolder mindset plus a growing body of post-season work, dismissing the Isles as playoff newbies risks being eliminated by them.
“The more you go through it, the better understanding you have of what it takes,” Islanders captain John Tavares said as his team prepared for Saturday afternoon’s Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinal against the Tampa Bay Lightning. “You can really sense that from our group this year, going into the playoffs and where we’re at now.
“We know how hard it is to win a series. We’ve been on the tough side of a couple that we lost. It really goes to show you how small a difference it is between winning and losing and what’s needed mentally and physically every game and every shift.”
Currently in just the fourth playoff series of his pro career, Tavares is clearly getting more comfortable with the pressure inherent to the assignment. In his 20 career postseason games, Tavares has 22 points (11 goals, 11 assists) and has three game winners in seven games already this year.
That familiarity and confidence with the best time of the year for a hockey player is being felt through the entire Islanders lineup. And it was certainly on display in Wednesday’s 5-3 win over the Bolts to get the early jump in the best-of-seven affair.
After a hard-fought, six-game series win over the Florida Panthers in the first-round, the Islanders have quickly made it clear they have no intention of stopping at Round 2 and won’t be an easy out.
It’s been a work in progress to get to this point for Tavares and his mostly young teammates, a journey that has required patience to realize the potential.
“Overall with this group, I’ve seen the maturity of them,” New York coach Jack Capuano said. “We’ve been down early in a lot of games this year and then we find a way to be resilient and come back where maybe two, three, four years ago that wouldn’t have been the case.
“We couldn’t find ways to win those close games and come from behind. They’re going to keep coming.”
That resilience was certainly on display in a pair of double overtime wins against the Panthers and had its moments in Game 1 here, as well. The Islanders didn’t flinch when the Bolts opened the scoring early in Wednesday’s first period and responded with four straight goals.
On Saturday, there’s a huge opportunity in front of them as they look to take a 2-0 series lead, something the Islanders haven’t done since the 1983 Stanley Cup final on the way to a four-game sweep of the Edmonton Oilers.
“The team that loses the first one always knows how tough the next one is,” Tavares said, when asked how different Game 2 will likely be. “We can expect their best. We obviously want to raise our game and build on the next one. There’s a lot of swings in a series.”
Each step forward has come with some tough lessons, but for the most part the Islanders are better for it. The Game 7 loss to the Capitals last year — a 2-1 defeat in which the Isles managed just 11 shots on net — showed they weren’t quite ready.
“The good thing is in our last series we found some answers. Not only have a lot of the guys been in the playoffs now, we’ve gone through it as a group and we kind of know how to react. I think you just see no panic in our group.”
That poise has been productive. And with all the attention heaped on the other Eastern Conference combatants — Pittsburgh and Washington — the Islanders just keep quietly and efficiently going about their business.