The NY Islanders take the fewest penalties and have the worst penalty kill in the NHL

There are many things you can say about the New York Islanders so far this season, but one thing you can't say is that they've taken too many penalties. According to a graphic from BarDown on Monday, through 32 games, the Islanders have the fewest penalty minutes of all 32 teams in the NHL, with 165. The Vegas Golden Knights have the next fewest with 169, but after that, the next closest team, Seattle Kraken, has been penalized for 204 minutes.

This is unequivocally a good thing. Undisciplined teams too often put themselves in a position to be short-handed at inopportune times during a game, either killing their momentum or letting their opponents gain some and tilt the ice in the following minutes. The problem has been that although we don't see it as often as other teams when we do, the Islanders' penalty kill is the worst in the league, successfully killing penalties at a putrid 64.7% clip.

The Islanders have spent 106:21 on the penalty kill, second to only Vegas (105:24) this season. Maybe the lack of game action can be blamed for the lack of penalty kill success this season because the coaching staff has yet to figure it out.

The Isles finished last in PK last season (71.5%), and it has worsened since replacing defensive coach Doug Houda with Tommy Abelin. Last year, they had the third-fewest penalty minutes in the league, so that trend has carried over. It wasn't always this way, and recent history backs that up. Two seasons ago, they finished ninth in the league (82.2%). The year prior, a year in which they missed the playoffs, they had the fourth-best PK in the league (84.2%). So what happened?

While Zach Parise and Cal Clutterbuck are no longer on the team, other previously considered reliable shorthanded players, such as Casey Cizikas and JG Pageau, remain. There have been injuries to the backend each of the last two seasons, but Ryan Pulock, Adam Pelech, and Scott Mayfield have been healthy for more games than they haven't.

The save percentages of both Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov on the PK had dropped considerably from two seasons ago, making you wonder whether the goaltending was bailing out the PK those seasons or whether the quality of high-danger chances allowed has gone up considerably. Head Coach Patrick Roy said the team was going back to a "flush" system they used successfully two seasons ago, but the change in system hasn't resulted in a shift in results.

They haven't had any answers so far, other than staying out of the box, which they do better than any team in the NHL. If only they could stay out it all game, every game.