It’s not quite the Same Old Isles who will show up at training camp this week, but it’s pretty far from a whole new world.
Longtime stalwarts Matt Martin and Cal Clutterbuck are gone, while Anthony Duclair and Maxim Tsyplakov enter, constituting the first meaningful change to the Islanders forward group since Bo Horvat and Pierre Engvall came in at the 2023 trade deadline.
That’s not nothing, and neither is a full season of coach Patrick Roy, who will run his first camp with the team, but is it enough?
That’s the big question entering 2024-25 for a team fighting to prove its relevance after a second straight first-round playoff loss to the Hurricanes in the spring.
While some players once considered part of the core are gone, bigger changes could be in store if the Islanders can’t show they’ve gone up a level this season.
Here are some of the biggest questions and storylines entering camp.
How does Ilya Sorokin look?
It’s not clear whether Sorokin will be on the ice at the start of camp after undergoing back surgery this offseason, but Lou Lamoriello said it’s not expected to hinder his ability to play regular-season games.
What’s more pressing — assuming the injury is indeed something he will get over quickly — is how Sorokin plays once he does get healthy.
The Islanders need Sorokin to look like the guy who could have won the 2023 Vezina Trophy again, instead of the player who got pulled in the playoffs and lost the starting job to Semyon Varlamov.
Whatever the Islanders’ ceiling is, there’s no scenario where they hit it that doesn’t involve a much better Sorokin than we saw last season.
Roy’s first camp in charge
Roy’s effect on the Islanders last season was immediately evident as the new head coach brought an increased practice intensity and an overhauled defensive system, helping them into the playoffs.
Now he’ll have an entire training camp to impart his philosophies instead of needing to do so on the fly.
Even if we have a fair idea of how that will look, it will be fascinating to see it play out.
This will be the first NHL training camp Roy gets to run since 2015, and he’ll bring a partially different staff than the Isles had a year ago with Tommy Albelin and Benoit Desrosiers in place as assistant coaches alongside John MacLean.
The new guys
Continuity was the theme of camp last year, when Julien Gauthier was the only new face who even had a chance to compete for a roster spot.
There wasn’t mass turnover this offseason, but essentially trading the two roster spots occupied by Clutterbuck and Martin for Duclair and Tsyplakov is a major symbolic shift that should help the Isles on ice as well.
Duclair figures to slot into the top line with Horvat and Mat Barzal, but it’s anyone’s guess where Tsyplakov will end up in his first season over from Russia.
How quickly Duclair can mesh with his new teammates and how Tsyplakov adjusts to the North American game are central to whether the Islanders can meaningfully improve from the first-round-and-out team we’ve seen the last two seasons.
The 12th forward competition and lineup experimentation
Outside of (we think) the top line, it’s an open question how Roy will configure his forwards on opening night, even though 11 of the 12 players who will be in the lineup are likely already known.
Barring something unexpected, Hudson Fasching, Simon Holmstrom and Oliver Wahlstrom are competing for one spot between the three of them.
But there is an additional element of not knowing for certain where in the lineup that spot is.
Roy needs to figure out where Tsyplakov fits best and which slots make sense for Casey Cizikas, Anders Lee and Engvall before that will become clear.
Expect a fair bit of experimenting during camp and early in the regular season.
Can anyone shake up the status quo?
Twenty-two out of 23 spots on the roster look pretty much set before anyone touches a puck, and it doesn’t look as though the Islanders can afford a 23rd player without going over the cap or into LTIR.
While it’s not likely anyone will come out of the blue to steal a roster spot, it’s not impossible.
Two-way signing Liam Foudy, college free agent Alex Jefferies and defense prospects Calle Odelius and Isaiah George will all be worth watching in that category.