Holiday cheer
Isles see reason to hope going into break
Two wins in a row does not erase what has happened over the first two months of the Islanders’ season, nor does it ease the pain when they still see themselves near the bottom of the Eastern Conference as the threeday Christmas break begins.
But the 5-1 win over the Sabres on Friday night at Barclays Center sure was a nice way to enter this holiday hiatus, especially after the 4-2 win over the Bruins in Boston on Tuesday. It might have come at the expense of a tired Sabres team, and two consecutive weak performances from opposing goalies. But at least it’s something, anything, to begin turning this around.
“I think we’re still in a pretty similar position,” said captain John Tavares, “but it’s something to build on. Take some small steps, keep climbing the ladder after a good two games. Obviously coming out of [the break], some important hockey for us.”
It’s important for a lot of reasons, and mostly because the organization needs to find which direction it is pointing with general manager Garth Snow and coach Jack Capuano at the helm. Now at 13-14-6, they are still last in the cutthroat Metropolitan Division and tied in points at the bottom of the confer- ence standings with the Atlantic Division basement dwellers, the Sabres (12-13-8) and Red Wings (14-15-4) — but ahead on each in the first tiebreaker — regulation and overtime wins.
Capuano, for one, is happy with the effort his team has given throughout the year — the classic testament of a coach thinking that he is doing all he can with the talent at his disposal.
“You have a challenge with every team you coach, different personnel,” Capuano said. “Our guys have given the effort, and as a coach, that’s all you can ask.”
The effort has not been commensurate with the results from first-year Islander Andrew Ladd, who got his fifth goal in the first 33 games of his seven-year, $38.5 million deal when he beat Buffalo netminder Anders Nilsson’s slow glove from above the right dot at 5:35 of the third, giving his team a 4-0 lead. If he had been a disappointment through this opening stretch, the hope is that he can help the Isles climb out of the close-to-insurmountable hole.
“I think you could get a little overwhelmed looking at the bigger picture,” Ladd said. “I think everyone to a man would say we want to be in a better position going into the break. We definitely don’t want to be in the hole that we’re in, but the only way to get out of that is to stick together and get out of it together.”