Daily Faceoff Live: Are the New York Islanders back?

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s take a look at what we saw on the ice last night, another win by the Islanders. Because they’re now 8-2 in their last 10 games. And perhaps the most surprising part about the run this Islanders team has been on early in the year Lane Lambert has them scoring goals 10th in the NHL at 3.35 goals scored per game.

Compare that to last year, they were 23rd at 2.79, over half a goal more per game so far early in this NHL season. I am stunned that Lane Lambert, a guy who was on that bench last year, has this team suddenly producing offense at an acceptable clip. I didn’t see this coming Mike.

Mike McKenna: I didn’t either, I thought that the Isles would be hanging out towards the bottom. It’s been impressive from Lane Lamberg so far and its been by committee. They have six players with five or more goals ,we’re even talking Zach Parise in that mix, and this has been against good teams. The Islanders scored six goals against the Hurricanes, they scored five against Colorado, they’ve had several four or more games included in that grouping.

But what’s really causing this Tyler is that the Islanders are a veteran team that knows how to play in a third period. Leading the NHL in goals scored in the final frame, 28 total in all their games played. So they’ve been coming from behind, they’ve been getting incredible goaltending from Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov and right now the Islanders are outpacing the advanced metrics.

So there is a little bit of a concern about their scoring, the bottom line is that they’re getting it done Tyler and I’ll give you one more thing that I look at, two of their last losses have been shutouts against Arizona and Detroit. Something to keep an eye on is that when the Islanders go dry, they go real dry, but right now Lambert’s got this team trending towards the right direction and they know they are going to get the goaltending to at least be competitive in every game.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, and I like that point you made there at the end because while maybe the offense could be a little unsustainable, maybe they fall back towards the middle of the pack, I think everyone would agree the goaltending is certainly sustainable. Both Varlamov and Sorokin can be those guys for the Islanders and everyone likes to say it’s early, its’ early let’s see how it goes over 82 (games) and I agree the Islanders maybe fall back a little bit, but points in October and November are worth just as much as points in March or April.

Banking these points now, especially for an Islanders team that was seemingly out of it because of their poor start last year. That’s impressive too the way they’ve come out of the gate and said we’re not gonna let what happened last year happen again.

Mike McKenna: Definitely its all in the rear-view mirror and another thing Lambert’s done, he’s gotten that D-core to be a little more active this year I think Noah Dobson has been amazing. You look at Pulock, you look at Mayfield their point totals are up, they’ve been more aggressive and been involved in the offensive end for that team. And that’s something that had to happen this year so its definitely positive movement in Long Island.