Islanders: Three reasons to be hopeful for playoff run

Anthony Beauvillier

Since April 20, Beauvillier has picked up seven goals. Only Aleksander Barkov, Jeff Carter, Kirill Kaprizov, and Sam Reinhart have more goals than Beau in that stretch. They all have eight. That’s just one more than Beauvillier.

When Beau is at his best, the Islanders typically do well. We all saw that in the post-season last year.

Beau co-led the Islanders in goals with nine (Brock Nelson also had nine goals). With Beau firing on all cylinders in the playoffs the Islanders were able to dispatch the Panthers, Capitals, and Flyers.

Anthony Beauvillier fell quiet in the Tampa series where the Islanders lost the series in six games.

Having Beau at his peak form with the playoffs only a week or so away is great news for the Islanders. Sure, they need other players to start matching Beau’s form. Mathew Barzal, Brock Nelson, Jordan Eberle, and Kyle Palmieri all need to start doing more offensively. But the fact that Beauvillier is shinning is something for the Islanders to build off of.

Keeping Beau with Nelson and Bailey on the team’s second line needs to continue into the playoffs. Again, Nelson might not be playing well at the moment but with Beau as the spark-plug and with the playoffs official started, Brock should get back to his regular ways.

Having one of the Islanders top-six lines going is all they need to start turning things around.