Islanders Only Team In NHL To Have 5 Players With 9 Goals Or More

In the Islanders‘ first 12 games of the season, they scored two goals or less six times. In 50 percent of their contests, they were scoring at most twice, which just isn’t good enough. Well, that’s since changed.

In their next 13 games, they’ve scored two goals or less just four times and have scored four or more goals in four of their games over that stretch. The moral of the story, the Islanders have gotten capable goal scoring.

In fact, they currently sit 14th in the league with 73 goals, a pace of 2.9 goals per game while allowing just 56 (2.2 goals per game) which is 6th in the league.

Something else worth noting is the Islanders are the only team in the league to have five different players with nine goals or more. No other team even has four guys with that mark.

Brock Nelson, Anders Lee, Jordan Eberle, Mathew Barzal, and JG Pageau all have nine or more goals for the Islanders. What does that tell you? Well, it shows that they have good depth with their middle-six forwards and that the top line is really good.

Pageau and Lee I would like to talk about a little more in depth. Many were nervous about Anders Lee at 30 years old coming off a down season. They saw the outlier 7% shooting on the power play and assumed he was just done.

Well, he’s got 12 goals in 25 games which is a 39 goal pace over a full season. Even if he could sit at 30 goals a season for the next four years on this deal the Isles are in great shape. Similar things were said about Pageau.

There was no way that he would be able to score like he did in Ottawa. Well, Pageau has done just that and done it playing a million different roles for the Islanders. He’s good on the power play, the penalty kill, centering the third line, playing wing in the top-six, and even rolling an extra shift with the fourth line. He does everything!

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By the way, nine goals in 25 games is a 82 game pace of 30 goals. The last time the Islanders had five 30 goal scorers? 1980-1981, a Stanley Cup winning team with the fourth most points in team history. Yeah, it’s been a while.