we miss leo k
Joined: Feb. 2018
Posts: 5,973
Likes: 5,107
Pretty much on point. I think (as shown with the first comment) most Islanders fans are just hoping to see signs that Lambert is his own dude and will let the team be a little more offensively creative. Not just running out the same 4th line every night, but cycling guys in and out to keep an older lineup (especially in the bottom-6) fresh.
But yeah, I think this team is better than last year's for a few reasons:
-Going from Zdeno Chara/Andy Greene as LD2/3 to Alex Romanov/Robin Salo is a major upgrade. Younger, quicker, and better with the puck. I think that having two soft spots on the D made it difficult for the Islanders to actually succeed at the type of counterattacking game they're built for.
-Normalcy and routines. Last year was just an odd year for the team, as has been discussed before - no home games til nearly Thanksgiving, a weirdly unbalanced schedule that had multiple stretches of 10 days with only 1 game in them early on, then being one of 2 teams(with the Senators) forced to play through a full-on COVID outbreak for multiple games with AHL-level squads, and then all that scheduling catching up in the back end of the year when they played their last 43 games over 79 days - the equivalent of 11 straight weeks of playoff-scheduled hockey. Just getting to a normal, balanced, 3-4ish games a week schedule with routine practice and rest will be great for this team.