NY Islanders Power Play: "We have to be better"

By the skin of their teeth, the NY Islanders are still in the playoffs.

The Islanders overcame the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night in a 3-1 victory, a better showing than their Saturday night debacle losing 5-2 on home ice. Their biggest problem? Their biggest problem has really been an issue all season, really. It's one of the reasons why general manager Lou Lamoriello went out and bought Bo Horvat from the Vancouver Canucks. The Islanders' power play has been awful, downright dreadful in the postseason, scoring at just a 6.7% clip, 16th in the playoffs, and last amongst all teams.

On Wednesday morning in a post morning skate media scrum, Islanders head coach, Lane Lambert, was addressed with the question as to whether or not he's going to make changes to his power play that went 0/3 on Tuesday, and has scored just once in the whole series. Specifically, there was question about Noah Dobson and his struggles on the man advantage.

"I'm not going to talk about what I'm seeing from this guy, or I'm not going to talk about personnel," Lambert said. "I'm not going to talk about tweaks. I'm not going to talk about entries. We have to be better."

The struggles on the man advantage should come as no surprise. The Islanders finished the regular season as the third-worst team on the power play, converting just 15.8% of their chances, ahead of only the Philadelphia Flyers and Anaheim Ducks, two teams that have a chance at winning the lottery finishing bottom-five in the NHL standings. Horvat was supposed to help address the lack of efficiency on the man advantage, however, it hasn't quite worked out that way as he's struggled to score himself.

Perhaps there are other options for the power play. Dobson's struggles have certainly presented themselves. Ryan Pulock has experience as the former power play quarterback and his boom of a shot could perhaps help uptick the production. Or maybe an improved Sebastian Aho could surprise us and work well on the Islanders' blue line.

Regardless, the unit as a whole needs some sort of shake-up. Scoring just one power play goal in five games in a playoff series likely should have had the Islanders already eliminated by now. Thank goodness for Ilya Sorokin.