{"id":284981,"date":"2021-06-27T04:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T01:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/weaknesses-islanders-must-fix-to-become-stanley-cup-champs\/"},"modified":"2021-06-27T04:15:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T01:15:00","slug":"weaknesses-islanders-must-fix-to-become-stanley-cup-champs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/weaknesses-islanders-must-fix-to-become-stanley-cup-champs\/","title":{"rendered":"#Weaknesses Islanders must fix to become Stanley Cup champs"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Weaknesses Islanders must fix to become Stanley Cup champs<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Anders Lee was missed terribly on Mathew Barzal\u2019s left side. But do you know who the Islanders missed just about as much? Jordan Eberle, that\u2019s who. And unlike Lee, who went down with a season-ending knee injury in March, Eberele was actually in the lineup on Barzal\u2019s right. You could be excused for not noticing that against the Lightning other than for a shift or two in Game<\/a> 6 of the Stanley Cup semifinals.<\/p>\n

The Islanders deserve a heap of credit not only for making it to the final four again, but also for pushing the Lightning to the limit in a riveting semifinal series<\/a>. The franchise has put the Shipwreck label in dry dock. The overachiever tag is past its expiration date, as well.<\/p>\n

Now, it is Lou Lamoriello\u2019s responsibility to engineer the next step with little room in which to maneuver under the cap before the Islanders become just another of those teams that comes close but can never quite make it to the mountaintop.<\/p>\n

And though the general<\/a> manager confronts the expected loss of Casey Cizikas to free agency and the task of somehow finding someone who can replicate his attributes well enough that Identity Line II is a game-changing force, Lamoriello is going to need to get Barzal much more help on his unit.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s return to his office on the left porch will be of aid, but the GM is going to need to find someone who is more dynamic and reliable than Eberle, who has two more years remaining on his contract with an annual cap hit of $5 million. The Islanders could leave Eberle exposed in the expansion draft, but it\u2019s unclear whether the Kraken would select the 31-year-old winger.<\/p>\n

\"Anders
Anders Lee and Lou Lamoriello<\/figcaption>
Getty Images; AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The intent is not to make Eberle the scapegoat for this painful defeat, but to suggest that the team needs to bulk up at the top in order to maximize Barzal\u2019s talent to the fullest degree. The Islanders\u2019 heart, structure, stout young defense and goaltending make up the organization\u2019s core essence, but that\u2019s not enough when it comes to beating the league\u2019s best, which, until further notice, is Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n

I was talking to Denis Potvin a while ago about Barzal. I asked No. 5 whether he thought Barzal would have fit on the Dynasty teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my mind there is no question,\u201d Potvin said of the 24-year-old center. \u201cThere\u2019s got to be an element that surpasses talent, and he has it. I\u2019m talking about courage, which I think is the most important word in hockey. He has that.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarlier this year I was watching a game, I think it was this year, and Barzal had a cut over his right eye, he was bleeding from the nose, a series of things happ<\/a>ened within the game and he never missed a shift, you know what I\u2019m saying? He went to the bench, he got patched up and went back out and played.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he is that kind of player. I think that Mat Barzal is going to be that star,\u201d said the Dynasty captain. \u201cHe is incredibly talented, it floors me how he can handle that puck and have that skating stride. He just seems to have it all. And he has that courage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barry Trotz is a great coach. His Cup victory with Washington elevated him to elite status. But he is not infallible. His decision to stay with a willing, but overmatched, Leo Komarov in Lee\u2019s place on the first line paid diminishing returns.<\/p>\n

\"Barry
Barry Trotz<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, the coach\u2019s decision not to reinsert rookie sniper Oliver Wahlstrom into the lineup when he recovered from the knee injury he sustained in Game 5 of the first round was questionable at best, especially since the power play on which he was a regular-season trigger went 1-for-17 against the Lightning. There was less and less from Travis Zajac, who had replaced Wahlstrom.<\/p>\n

The Islanders are set up on the back end and in goal. They\u2019re young in those key spots. But the mandate for Lamoriello is to find an upper-echelon talent to fit with Barzal, despite cap restraints. Perhaps this is the summer the Islanders will move Nick Leddy, whose skating is no longer of the type of world-class ability that allows the 30-year-old to negate mistakes. Losing Leddy would open $5.5 million of cap space.<\/p>\n

Or maybe Wahlstrom, a right-handed shot, will move onto the top unit, though that would create third-line vacancies on either side of Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who must have been physically compromised against Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n

Still, the Islanders must diversify, not only for the playoffs, but also for the regular season. Their relentless grinding style wore them down through the stretch of each of the last two seasons. And those were both truncated years of 68 and 56 games, respectively. The full 82 awaits this team, which will have fewer than three months to recover before training camp.<\/p>\n

The Islanders need more weapons up front. But regardless of whether Lamoriello succeeds in reeling them in, the mandate for Trotz is not to try and win every game 1-0.<\/p>\n

Because sometimes those 1-0 games can go against you.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Weaknesses Islanders must fix to become Stanley Cup champs” Anders Lee was missed terribly on Mathew Barzal\u2019s left side. But do you know who the Islanders missed just about as much? Jordan Eberle, that\u2019s who. And unlike Lee, who went down with a season-ending knee injury in March, Eberele was actually in the lineup on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":284982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/Lee.Lamoriello.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[110447,71131,71132,109224,91508,71133,88452,70951],"class_list":["post-284981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-6-26-21","tag-anders-lee","tag-barry-trotz","tag-casey-cizikas","tag-jordan-eberle","tag-lou-lamoriello","tag-mathew-barzal","tag-new-york-islanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}