New York Islanders Start Nine Game Road Trip

The New York Islanders start a marathon long road trip with nine games away from the Barclays. The Isles road record does speak volumes on the possibility of this being a good thing.

On the road this season the New York Islanders are 7-13-4. That’s terrible. Thankfully their first game on this road trip is against an equally terrible Detroit Red Wings team.

The Red Wings are just two points from the bottom of the Eastern Conference with 58 points from 59 games played. The only team with fewer is Carolina, who also has four game sin hand on the Red Wings.

Without this season’s bye-week nonsense, the Red Wings should very much be rooted to the bottom of the conference.

The Islanders should be able to take this game. Although, we’ve seen them lose winnable games before so anything could happen. Maybe Ryan Strome ices the puck in untimely fashion once again.

Who’s Hot

Andrew Ladd has woken up from his first half slumber, and he’s on fire.

He’s got a steep hill to climb to justify that $5.5 million cap hit over the next million years (or, seven year). But at the very least he’s not looking like a total pilon out there.

There’s no way he continues that goal-per-game pace. But a healthy 0.5 goals per game would be nice to see. It would be the perfect secondary scoring the Isles could use to make a playoff push.

Ladd took pelters from most of us for most of the year, and rightfully so, but at the moment it’s hard not to like what he’s doing on the ice.

More from Eyes on Isles: Should Isles Trade for Frans Nielsen?

Who’s Not

The Islanders power play is well off the pace that Doug Weight set when he took over from Jack Capuano.

Under Capuano, the Islanders had one of the worst power plays in the league. With Weigth, the Islanders started averaging an ~20% efficiency on the man advantage. But since then, the power play has gone 1/11 over the last four games. Something needs to change.

New York Islanders Lineup

Lee-Tavares-Bailey                         Leddy-Boychuk
Beauvillier-Nelson-Strome          Hickey-Mayfield
Ladd-Quine-Chimera                     de Haan-Seidenberg
Kulemin-Cizikas-Clutterbuck       Greiss (Berube)

Next: Ryan Pulock Deserves A Call Up

Where To Catch The Game:

Live: 7:30pm, Joe Louis Arena
TV: MSG+2
Radio: AM970 – The Answer, 88.7FM – WRHU, 103.9FM – LI News