No joke I thought about you when he scored lmao

lol yeah he should be playing 15 min a night at least. The problem with the isles right now is the wrong players are getting too much ice time.

No Schneider = No win

The team as a whole was lethargic tonight I don’t think we can blame it on one guy. This is on everyone.

Pathetic effort throughout basically. Barzal and Eberle had one of the worst games of their Islanders careers, Komarov being his usual self - bad. Palmieri and Zajac horrendous, Wahlstrom drove that line all by himself. Thought Clutter and Cizikas was better than they have been for a while, at least first half of the game. Thought the Nelson line was OK tonight though, cannot blame Bailey tonight when there was like 8 guys that was much worse in my opinion. But Mayfield though, for christ sake, so ****ing bad this year, cannot stand him much longer... Leddy was really bad too alongside Greene as usual. Agree on Martin, looking totally burned out second half of the season.

Dont have any statistics to back up my eyetest of the game, should point that out.

Disagree - there were plenty of guys that had solid games , but there were 5-6 guys that were awful and looked disrnterested, which is why they lost

I don’t understand why trotz can’t switch komarov with someone else when that line isn’t going well. Komarov doesn’t need to be glued to barzal. Mayfield got walked on the 2nd goal and was out for his next shift. Travis zajac on for the 6 on 5 - no beau or wahlstrom lol I mean it wasn’t a given they would score, but having bailey and zajac on the ice at the same time with a minute left down a goal...


Pelech, wahlstrom, beau, and palmieri were their top players last night by game score.

The whole team was slow

Nelson’s line was good and the 3rd line was good because of wahlstrom. Pelech, pulock, Greene Dobson had good games as well. Leddy-mayfield pairing + 1st/4th line killed us.

Zajac... didn’t know he was this bad, unbelievable to think that he was was the reason Lou did that trade, instead of getting Hall and Lazar. That highstick on Mittelstadt with 1 min left yesterday got me laughing, wtf was he doing.

Trotz put him out for the faceoff and he lost it lol - he really is awful - how do you not have your two best goal scorers out on a 6 v 5.

Also how trotz is handling palmieri is bizarre. We gave up a 1st so palmieri can play on the 3rd line and bumper spot on the PP? Trotz has no idea how to handle talented players .

Yeah, as I’ve said before, wonder if Lou believed he payed a 1st and a conditional 3rd for Palmieri to play on a limited bottom-6 role and a benched depth player... I think that Lou absolutely thought Palmieri would take Lee’s minutes with Barzal. Don’t know what he hoped for with Zajac though. For the record, Hall NEVER would of got the chance to play with Barzal either, absolutely sure of it, to talented to trust him with that in Trotz mind. Offensively talented = automatically catastrophic defensively. Agree 100% that Trotz have zero clue to handle talented guys, he don’t trust them, simple as that. Especially young offensively talented players.

Btw, something I would love to see; Trotz picking his dream team (only active players). Think it would be hilariously bad actually.

Seeing how palmieri looks in this system is why I’m so high on beau - make no mistake palmieri is still a very talented top 6 F, but between this system and playing with guys that don’t compliment him, he just looks so ordinary.

100% hall would have never played with barzal despite the fact that he’s actually good defensively and actually known for his forechecking abilities. The worst defensive forwards in the top 9 are actually lee and bailey, but because they’re “predictable” offensively trotz somehow thinks they’re good defensively if that makes sense .

It would have been:
Komarov-barzal-eberle
Hall-Nelson-bailey
Beau-Nelson-wahlstrom

Defense would look something like :
Alzner-Weber
Vlasic-Manson
Leddy-Mayfield

It makes total sense, my take on his thinking with these 2 players also. It sort of explains why Trotz want Lee with Barzal in 3 on 3 haha. I personally think he would of played Hall - Pageau - Wahlstrom. Imagine how crazy it is that Komarov plays on LW1 or doesn’t play at all, what is that!? Haha I have NEVER seen that **** on another pro icehockey team in the world before. Doesn’t make sense at all. Not good to play in the lineup, if he isn’t playing on the first line.. haha.

Definitely something like that. The current 4th line is a sure thing, Tom Wilson probably the first guy he writes down I imagine.

The whole predictability thing is BS - you need to let your top players be creative. It's infuriating that Trotz plays a guy like Bailey in the top 6 just because he plays a simple game. I'm not a Bailey hater, I just think he makes more sense in a 3rd line role.

Yeah trotz is the only coach who rotates his healthy scratches on the 1st line. How does that not get more media attention? lol we'll get bounced in the 1st round and then there will be a bunch of articles about how trotz made a team with Komarov on the top line competitive - but it's his fault..

I disagree with the narrative that the isles don't have the personell to play a more offensive style. With palmieri id go with:

beau-barzal-palmieri
wahlstrom-nelson-Eberle
MDC-Pageau-Bailey
Martin-cizikas-komarov

That top 9 can play with anyone. Both beau and palmieri are defensive play drivers with great shots which will allow barzal to have more space. 2nd line has an elite play driver in eberle and wahlstrom on his off side would be lethal. 3rd line has the TBL model with a few elite forecheckers who can also score.

Yes, Staple will definitely write an article or two about exactly that. I don’t see which team we could beat of Washington, Pittsburgh and Boston at the moment. They all mash up very good against us. Because they have shown they’re adaptable against us this year, while we cannot do the same against them. We have one way of playing and only one. He will continune to roll 4 lines even if we are behind with 3 min left in game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.

Bailey definitely makes more sense in a 3rd line role, especially when Trotz roll 4 lines anyway. He would get even easier matchups and could be effective in that role with Pageau and maybe Bellows? - for example.

I agree, that’s why I absolutely hate the narrative Trotz and media create, ”we can only play one game or we lose, because were not talented enough”, bull**** in my opinion.

They need to stop with the 4 lines BS lol - the 4th line should not be getting similar ice time as barzal. The team is significantly better when he’s on the ice. The only way I see them winning is if komarov and palmieri switch and barzal + wahlstrom on the same PP unit.

At this point I probably wouldn’t put bellows in, I’d prefer dal colle

I remember during the playoff run a leafs fan posted the isles D pairs and said something along the lines of “wow trotz is a magician, who is Devon toews” and was arguing all the D are a product of trotz - now everyone recognizes toews as an elite defenseman...

It’s like people totally forget how offensively competent this team was under Doug Weight, the hardest thing in hockey is to score. Doug Weight was a brutally bad coach and shouldn’t have coached an NHL team and haven’t since, but people seem to forget how good they were even though they probably had the worst coach in the league, but the discours is made like we were THE worst team in the league and Trotz did the miracle on ice with us, don’t buy it at all, any coach would have made us better with all that talent. With that said, Trotz is one of the best coaches in the world, but not hockeys version of Messias.

Yes trotz is probably in the 5-7 range in terms of best coaches, but he is not this elite coach who carries teams. Good motivator , his system works but you’re not an elite coach if you never ice your best lineup- IMO it’s the reason why he’s only made it past the 2nd rd 2x - he’s stubborn and relies on too many washed up vets.