NY Islander Fans biggest losers following a disappointing March 7th and beyond

The term "sucks" does not remotely describe just how bad the NY Islanders unspecial teams actually are this season. The PP is ranked 32nd in the NHL, last in the league at 11.7%. Removing Nelson, that leaves Lee and Palmieri as the team leaders after 65 games with 4 PP goals. With odd bounces and deflections, you could put Sparky the Dragon on the unit and the stats would be better. The PK unit is not that much better, entering today with 70.9%, which is 31st in the league. They perhaps needed the Fishstick Guy out there blocking shots. There is an NHL stat that says combining the PP and PK percentages shows the likelihood of making the playoffs when over 100. Looks like an 82 isn't going to cut it.

Lamoriello had 60 games to address the mess that has been the 2024/25 NHL season for the Islanders. Injuries are a part of any sport, and the great teams have a plan. Look at the dominant teams of the New England Patriots in the NFL. Excluding their quarterback, they rarely kept a player longer than four or five seasons, before moving on to younger, cheaper players that had the same attributes as the ones they cut or traded. As fans, why would we want to keep Nelson or Palmieri at ages 33 and 34 respectively and for upwards of $10 million a season/AAV? We should have been shopping them in January, along with Lee, Dobson and Pageau.

Few players should be off limits as GMs are supposed to do one thing and that is to make their teams better (on this team only Ilya "Roki" Sorokin might fall into that category) and that is how a team evolves into greatness. I would dare say that Garth Snow was just as good for this team as Lamoriello and I'm not sure that's the legacy Lou was going for to end his career.