Historically bad special teams was impossible for the NY Islanders to overcome

As the New York Islanders' season comes to a close tonight in Columbus, there will be reflections on what went wrong. The reasons will range from injuries and coaching to underperformers and bad luck. All valid explanations, but when it comes down to it, one reason stands out - special teams.

According to MSG Networks statistician Eric Hornick in The Skinny, the Isles head into the final game with a 12.6% power play (31st in the league), which would be the lowest in club history since the stat became official in 1977-78.  No team is overcoming that. Over the last five years, the Islanders' attempts to become a higher-scoring team have failed. They finished 21st, 22nd, 22nd, 22nd in the previous four seasons and are 26th heading into the final game this year. The reason for the drop from bad to really bad can be attributed to the ineptitude on the power play.

Meanwhile, the better part of their special teams, the penalty kill (also ranked 31st), is at 72.2%, only slightly ahead of last season's 71.5% pace. But what is really ugly, as Hornick points out, is that the home penalty kill, which just two seasons ago set a club record high for a full season (89.2%), hit a club record low (70.0%) this season.

Back in December, after 2+ months of special teams being their achilles heel, head coach Patrick Roy appeared to regret his approach during training camp. "I feel like we should have maybe spent more time on the PK and power play in training camp because as soon as the season starts, it's a grind," said Roy viaThe Hockey News. "And look, in the last month, we maybe have had three practices, and we play back-to-back games."

The thought being that once the season starts, the time to practice is limited and becomes harder to make adjustments. It's a hard sell to think that 2-3 days of practice in September would have made a stark difference in results. Losing Mathew Barzal hurt, but they were equally as lousy when he was on the ice. As for the penalty kill, it got better when the goaltending got better, and Ilya Sorokin was much better starting in January than he was the first three months of the year.

We'll find out whether Roy is held accountable for the team's struggles or if the assistant coaches are the ones that fall on the special teams sword. The Islanders were a strong team at even strength most of the season, but no team can overcome being as bad as they were on special teams when so many NHL games are decided by those moments with the man advantage and on the kill.