This worrying early-season Islanders trend needs fixing

When Patrick Roy took over behind the Islanders’ bench and guided them into the 2024 playoffs, much of the reason was a dramatic improvement in the defensive zone.

Roy, at the time, overhauled the team’s systems, implementing a primarily man-to-man system that stressed what he calls “second quick” — adding another defender on the wall to force a turnover. It worked wonders, and the Islanders went from being one of the worst defensive teams in the league in the first half of the season to one of the best in the second.

Five games into Roy’s second full season as coach, he may need to take another look at his system, or at least how his team is executing it.

Even with two straight wins in hand heading into a short home stand that begins Tuesday with the Sharks visiting UBS Arena, the Islanders have been bleeding chances. Before Sunday’s slate of games, they ranked 26th in shots allowed per 60 minutes and 31st in expected goals allowed per 60 at five-on-five, according to Evolving Hockey. Natural Stat Trick, which sorts low, medium and high-danger chances, had the Islanders ranking 30th in five-on-five high-danger chances allowed per 60.

It’s a small sample, and Islanders goaltending has been a problem, too, with Ilya Sorokin showing cracks in each of his four starts.

But this isn’t an either/or situation with the goaltender and the defense. Sorokin let in a soft one from David Perron in the first period of Saturday’s 5-4 win over the Senators. The Islanders defense was also caught out of position repeatedly, and their forwards were slow on the backcheck for most of the afternoon — exacerbating an already existing problem of giving up chances on the rush.

“There’s a couple moments where we shot ourselves in the foot, especially at the end of the second [period],” Jonathan Drouin said afterward. “… There’s some stuff we have to look at and be a little more mature, a little better with puck decisions.”

Defensemen have been given much more freedom to jump into the rush under this season, and the Islanders have personnel more suited to that than in the past, with Tony DeAngelo and Matthew Schaefer both eager to be involved offensively. Adam Boqvist, who played Saturday with Alexander Romanov out due to an upper-body injury, falls in that category too.

DeAngelo’s pair with Boqvist was outshot 14-3 on Saturday, per Natural Stat Trick, and the DeAngelo-Romanov combination has largely struggled, too. Perhaps that’s indicative of the Islanders struggling a bit with how to balance their newfound freedom with their defensive responsibilities.

Certainly, if the forwards are backchecking the way they did on Saturday — which is to say if they are not backchecking at all — then the problem isn’t going to go away.

“We’ll certainly get to that next time we meet,” captain Anders Lee said. “We just had to be clean. Clean hockey. We were putting the puck in over and over throughout the night and we were getting the puck back, so we had to get back to that a little bit.”

Lee, along with a sizable percentage of the roster, has been on Long Island long enough to recall not only when Roy first came in, but when Barry Trotz turned the Islanders into a contender by emphasizing their strengths on defense.

These Islanders have more offensive talent than Trotz’s teams, or even the 2023-24 squad. But then as now, the Islanders are not going to get anywhere by trying to win games 5-4.

They got out of Ottawa with a 5-4 victory and two points in hand. But they know as well as anyone outside the room that won’t be a sustainable formula.

“I think both sides could go back and clean up a few things,” Lee said. “It was one of those nights where [you’re] trading rushes and trading opportunities. You don’t want to see that every night.”