The conventional wisdom around the Islanders going into the offseason was that they had to pool their resources to focus on scoring, and that is just what management did in bringing in Anthony Duclair and Maxim Tsyplakov.
As an offshoot of that decision, Lou Lamoriello essentially committed to rolling with the same defense corps next season as the Isles had last season.
Aside from losing Sebastian Aho — who did not play in the playoffs — and Robert Bortuzzo — who always looked like a short-term solution — it’s the same blue line, likely with the same pairings the Islanders ran with when they were fully healthy last season.
That represents an interesting bet by management after the Islanders finished in the bottom half of the league in pretty much every defensive category even after Patrick Roy took over. (Under Lane Lambert’s tenure, you could take the word “half” out of that sentence).
The belief appears to be that a combination of better durability, a full season of Roy and a bounce-back year from Ilya Sorokin can fix the issues that plagued the Islanders for most of last season.
Setting aside the penalty kill, which will likely see some personnel and scheme changes with assistant coach Doug Houda gone and Cal Clutterbuck unlikely to return, it’s the result of staying this course that could have a larger impact on how next season goes than changing up the forward group.
Unlike other stay-the-course bets the Islanders have made recently, there is some real evidence in their favor.
Scott Mayfield, Adam Pelech, Ryan Pulock, Aho and Bortuzzo all missed chunks of time at various points last season with injury.
Mayfield broke his ankle blocking a shot in Game 1 of the season and, even after returning, never looked right.
There were reasons to be concerned beyond injury, particularly with Pelech and Pulock dropping off from their peak of a few years ago, but you could count on your hands the number of times the Islanders rolled out their best possible defense group last season.
After Mayfield underwent surgery in February, they didn’t have it at all down the stretch.
Obviously the Islanders can’t bank on a completely healthy season from all six players who will be in the opening night lineup (and it will be interesting to see how the seventh defense spot is handled after Samuel Bolduc appeared to lose Roy’s confidence almost immediately following the coaching change), but they can view last year’s pileup of injuries as an anomaly.
Splitting up their season-long stats by coach also paints a compelling picture in favor of the direction the Islanders chose.
When Roy took over, the Islanders cut their expected goals allowed at five-on-five from 2.84 per 60 minutes to 2.4.
Their high-danger chances allowed per 60 dropped dramatically, from 12.73 to 9.58 — from nearly last in the league to nearly best in the league.
The Islanders got more structured and much better at keeping teams out of the middle of the ice at even strength.
It was far from perfect — they were relying on Semyon Varlamov to keep them in games a little too often for comfort late in the year — but Roy also didn’t have the luxury of a full training camp and had to implement his system on the fly.
That won’t be the case this time around.
That leads into the other factor the Islanders are banking on: Sorokin getting back into form after a rough season led to his playoff benching.
After the All-Star break in particular, advanced stats pegged Sorokin as barely above league average, with just 1.55 goals saved above expected according to Evolving Hockey’s model.
By the eye test, that might even be a little generous.
Even dating to Sorokin’s time in the KHL, though, that stretch represents a dramatic outlier.
Goalies are notoriously fickle, but Sorokin has been remarkably consistent ever since moving to CSKA Moscow in 2015, a quality that carried through his first three NHL seasons, but not his fourth.
Given the amount of money the Islanders have invested in the 28-year-old, they really don’t have any choice but hope that Sorokin’s own history is instructive and last year represented a floor.
Otherwise, their problems will extend far beyond 2024-25.