It may not have been the best of times, but for a brief moment at least, it wasn’t the worst of them.
A year ago, the New York Islanders finally looked like they were climbing out of irrelevance. Five seasons outside the playoffs came to an end in the spring of 2013, when New York faced off against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round and looked extremely competitive in a six-game series.
Today, the Islanders have 21 points in 29 games, tying them with Florida for 28th in the NHL ahead of only the Buffalo Sabres. Are the Islanders sliding back into the dark? Did they ever really leave it?
To answer that question, let’s start with a quick look at some basic numbers: goals for and against. The following data comes from NHL.com, and to make it easily comparable, I’ve projected the totals in all three cases over an 82-game season:
We see relatively small fluctuations downward in terms of goals for at both even strength and on the power play. There’s a bigger jump in goals against and a massive jump in goals against on the penalty kill (with the latter representing alm ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
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