Islanders’ scratch of Engvall with mom on hand a controversial move
Getting embarrassed in front of mom doesn’t get easier as you get older.
That is part of the context in which Lane Lambert’s benching of Pierre Engvall on Thursday night in Boston must be viewed. The Islander Moms were on the trip with the team to TD Garden for the 5-2 loss to the Bruins. So benching Engvall for this specific game carried a little extra weight.
For that reason, it brought to mind Lambert making Josh Bailey a healthy scratch in Tampa early last season — a move that ensured Bailey’s 1,000th game would be on the road in Carolina instead of at home against the Rangers.
It was a question at the time whether doing that to Bailey, a beloved veteran and alternate captain, would lose Lambert the dressing room. It didn’t, and Bailey — a consummate professional — kept his head down and didn’t complain. But after the season, he made it clear that being scratched under those circumstances bothered him.
“Looking back on it now, it’s rather telling, getting scratched four or five games into the year before my 1,000th game to where we end up at the end of this season,” Bailey said on breakup day. “I think it makes a lot more sense now.”
The difference between now and then is that it was fair to make an argument that Bailey shouldn’t have been in the lineup on merit. As last season went on, it became clear he was on borrowed time with the organization, which eventually attached a draft pick to trade him to the Blackhawks in order to avoid a buyout. He did not play in the playoffs.
Engvall, however, is 12 games into a seven-year deal, signed less than six months ago at $21 million total.
He has not scored yet this season, but nobody is complaining because he leads the Islanders in five-on-five assists and is a key part of their second line, whose metrics are amongst the best in hockey.
There is no argument that Engvall isn’t one of their best 12 forwards. And given that the revamped second line of Anders Lee, Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri was minus-3 and got played up and down the ice by Trent Frederic, Charlie Coyle and James van Riemsdyk, it’s clear that benching Engvall put a serious dent in the Islanders’ chances of winning Thursday.
That doesn’t mean Lambert shouldn’t have done it. You can’t judge the move without knowing why it happened — and he refused to give a reason after the game.
“I can’t tell you,” Lambert said. “Pierre and I had a conversation and we’ll just leave it at that.”
Engvall committed a heinous defensive zone turnover Tuesday against Minnesota, leading directly to a Joel Eriksson Ek goal. It could be that Lambert found that beyond the pale, or it could be that something else happened to prompt disciplinary action.
Whatever the reason, the timing and immediate impact of the move mean that it needs to have the intended long-term effect.
The Islanders, now 5-4-3, have lost three in a row and four of their last five. Benching a top-six player is a serious card for Lambert to play as he tries to give the dressing room a jolt.
But at least against the Bruins, it was the same old story and Lambert was again left lamenting his team’s inability to play a full 60 minutes.
Asked if he thought the second line was missing Engvall’s speed, Lambert said, “No, I didn’t,” and pinned the issues squarely on the team’s struggles in the defensive zone. Given the gap in performance with and without Engvall, that is a little dubious, but he’s not wrong that the Islanders still have a lot to clean up in their own end.
In a vacuum, there is little shame in dropping two points at TD Garden, where no opposing team has a regulation win yet this season.
But turning things around over the next week — when the Islanders have the Capitals at home before jetting across the continent for a Seattle and Western Canada trip where three of the four teams they’ll face are struggling — is a must, or questions will start to swirl about Lambert’s job status.
That will be the team’s first real road trip of the year, with the four road games so far all having been one-and-done trips within a few hours of home. Some time away from Long Island might not be the worst thing for this team right now.
If things go wrong, at least no one will have to explain it to mom.