The organizational reaction to what is likely to be a third straight season of failing to get past the first round is going to say everything about how serious the Islanders really are about building a contender.
Assuming there is not a miracle in store with the Isles down 3-0 to Carolina and facing elimination on Saturday, there are no excuses left to stick with the group yet again unless ownership is content to ask season-ticket holders to fork over 11 percent more next season to watch a team dead-ending its way to mediocrity.
This offseason represents a natural jumping-off point for the Islanders to retool, even if a full rebuild is out of the question given how many players are under long-term contracts. Even if it means being a little bit worse next year, the Islanders need to take that path, because this isn’t working.
Cal Clutterbuck, Matt Martin, Oliver Wahlstrom, Simon Holmstrom, Kyle MacLean, Mike Reilly, Robert Bortuzzo and Sebastian Aho are all on expiring contracts. Brock Nelson, Kyle Palmieri, Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov are going into the last years of their respective deals; Jean-Gabriel Pageau will have two seasons left, as will Anders Lee.
Extending Dobson, Romanov and MacLean should be no-brainers — all three are young, talented, restricted free agents and can be part of the core when the Islanders are next ready to contend for a Cup, whenever that might be.
A Cup-contending team built around Dobson, Romanov, Mat Barzal, Bo Horvat and Ilya Sorokin should be the long-term goal. That’s a goal to which the Islanders can aspire and one that won’t require years of tanking and an empty building to reach.
Everyone else? Management needs to have some painful conversations about how to best remake a core that is responsible for the best era of Islanders hockey since the Dynasty. And it needs to be a joint effort between general manager Lou Lamoriello and head coach Patrick Roy.
Roy has been nothing but overwhelmingly positive in public about the group since taking over behind the bench and said Friday that he’s not thinking about the offseason. Upon getting the job, he made clear very quickly that he does not want to tread on Lamoriello’s territory.
But right now, the Islanders have a roster built to play an offensively style diametrically opposed to Roy’s principles. A few months ago, Roy was preaching puck possession, analogizing how the Islanders want to play with a lead to a football team running the ball and killing out the clock. Even when the Islanders finished the regular season 8-0-1, it was rare to see them doing that.
The Islanders need to get faster and harder on pucks. They need a roster that can balance grind with skill. They need to have four lines that can enter the zone with control instead of dumping and chasing. Roy, who does not have years of familiarity to bias him towards this group’s capabilities, should have a voice in who stays or goes.
The bottom-six was a black hole of scoring this year, which is nothing new. That needs to change.
The third line never coalesced into a matchup unit and Pageau had his worst scoring season without an injury or COVID-shortened asterisk. This offseason looks like a natural end to the Identity Line with Martin and Clutterbuck’s contracts expiring. Those units don’t need to turn over completely, but must look different.
Reilly has done enough to merit bringing back, but thinking within that scope is how the Islanders got here. A left-sided defenseman who can compete with Adam Pelech for top four minutes should be a priority in how the Islanders spend the extra cap space they get with the league-wide bump to an estimated $87.6 million this offseason.
There will be fallout from Sorokin’s struggles and Game 3 benching to navigate. There are Nelson and Palmieri’s futures to think about — if the Islanders are not going to extend the pair, then they are not close enough to competing for a championship to justify keeping them in contract years.
There is a mega-extension coming for Dobson, with implications for the cap.
There is Lamoriello’s own status and the question of whether he wants to navigate a circuitous route back to contention at age 81.
These are the questions the Islanders avoided confronting when a COVID outbreak ruined the 2021-22 season and avoided again a year later after a season similar to this one. They have told themselves again and again that there is still winning DNA in this group and seen just enough to squeeze out an argument for staying the course.
Unless there’s a miracle coming, there’s no argument anymore.
