Assessing the New York Islanders at the midway mark of 2024-25 season

Consistency

Speaking of consistency, the elephant in the room has been the number of blown third-period leads this season. At the moment, the New York Islanders have the second-most blown third-period leads this season with seven. Only the San Jose Sharks have blown more leads this year.

While not all of those blown leads have resulted in losses, some blown leads have yielded loser points, the fact is that the Isles need to do a much better job of holding on to leads after 40 minutes. In hindsight, the Isles could easily have ten more points in the standings had they held on to those points.

But there’s no sense in crying over spilled milk at this point. So, the road ahead means squandering as few of those points as possible. Yes, that reduces the margin of error at this point, but that’s the road ahead.

The biggest reason for the squandered leads has been inconsistency. All too often, we’ve seen the Islanders play a great game through 40 minutes and then crumble in the third period. In my estimation, it’s due to physical conditioning. The team seems to run out of gas, especially as the game winds down in the last five minutes.

Opposing teams know this, and take advantage of it. Some have pointed to a psychological issue holding the Islanders back. While that may play a factor, the Isles are mostly a veteran team. They don’t have many rookies or young players who could be said to crack under the pressure.

If physical conditioning is indeed the big issue, Patrick Roy must look into better managing his players’ ice time. Otherwise, the problem will only get bigger as the season wears on.