New York Islanders: Brock Nelson Is Back In Hibernation Mode

New York Islanders forward Brock Nelson is having the worst statistical season of his career and is back in hibernation mode.

Brock Nelson might very well be the most frustrating player on the New York Islanders. At times, he lets his talent shine through, and he’ll score on a nice wrist shot. Other, times he’ll have a stretch of games where you believe he is finally becoming that goal scorer everyone expected him to be.

Yet time and time again, Brock Nelson goes into deep periods of play where he gives you absolutely nothing. I like to call them his hibernation periods.

Through 36 games Brock Nelson has just 12 points (9 goals, 3 assists). Over a full 82 game season that puts him on a pace for 27 points. Nelson’s previous career low came in 2013-2014 when he put up 26 points in 72 games.

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The past three years Brock has been in the low to mid 20’s in goals and low to mid 40’s in points. While it’s been rather disappointing that he hasn’t grown or developed to his potential as a real scoring threat the Isles at least knew they were getting a 40 point player for under $3 million a year.

This year Brock is giving you just about half of what you would expect from him production wise. It’s not like he’s giving you other stuff but not scoring, he’s literally giving you no positive contributions.

He’s got career low’s in possession numbers as well with a 45 CF% and a -5.4 CF% rel.

Nelson’s currently in one of his bad hibernation periods. Realistically, this entire season has been a hibernation period but I’ll explain what I mean by a really bad hibernation stretch.

For now the third time this season Brock Nelson has gone six games in a row without a point. On three separate occasions, Brock has gone pointless for a stretch of six games or more. That’s insanity.

You would think that Doug Weight would scratch him, even for just one night as a wakeup call right? Wrong. Brock has played in all 36 games, while players like Ryan Pulock, Anthony Beauvillier and Josh Ho-Sang get treated much worse for smaller issues in their game.

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There’s no consistency with the Islanders policing as an organization. It should be if you play well you get in the lineup, but it’s more like if you’re a young player you can’t make any mistakes, and if you’re a veteran you get a million opportunities to prove yourself. It’s getting ridiculous.