The roster of guys who didn’t talk on breakup day said it all.
Anthony Duclair, who didn’t play the season’s last eight games after Patrick Roy called him out in extraordinarily harsh terms, didn’t address reporters, with an Islanders spokesman declining to say whether Duclair was even on the premises.
Roy didn’t talk either.
Nor did general manager Lou Lamoriello.
Pierre Engvall wasn’t there because his wife is having a baby — an excused absence, to be clear, but one that’s pretty on the nose.
There will be recriminations for this disappointing Islanders season, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if any or all of those four were on the wrong end of them.
For now, there’s a whole lot unanswered about how the club will move forward after missing the playoffs.
The themes from those who did talk Saturday: The Islanders felt they lacked consistency and identity; the failures to close out games early in the season were brought up again and again; so were both special teams after the power play and penalty kill each ranked 31st in the league.
“It’s having that confidence in ourselves,” Casey Cizikas said. “I think it’s learning and knowing that we can close out games when we need to. Not giving up late goals or giving up leads and things like that, having that confidence in ourselves and in our group that we can get the job done, put teams away when we need to. That’s something we need to learn how to do.”
It doesn’t feel like it, especially to the players themselves, but it’s been a long time since the Islanders consistently executed the style of play they rode to two NHL final fours under Barry Trotz.
Whether in the playoffs or not, they’ve been in the league’s mushy middle for four seasons now.
Closing out games, the penalty kill, the power play — these aren’t new issues.
Trading for Bo Horvat was supposed to fix the power play.
That was 2 ½ seasons ago.
Hiring Roy was supposed to help all of the above and didn’t; the head coach’s fate is going to have to be decided fast now, with the NHL’s coaching carousel getting going in earnest Saturday.
“I feel like coming out of camp, we felt ready for the season,” Kyle Palmieri said, when asked what he made of Roy’s first full season behind the bench. “There was some stuff we had to adjust on the fly when he came in last year. We had more time to meet and play around with things in preseason games and stuff like that, so I think everyone felt a little more comfortable. But as far as adjustments, there’s things we probably have to do to become a better team and a more complete team.”
As recently as a month ago, it would have been a stretch to consider Roy on the hot seat.
The way the Islanders crashed out of the season, with Roy essentially exiling Duclair at the start of April, puts a big question mark there in addition to the one that’s been over Lamoriello’s head all season.
So too does the parade of players Saturday citing problems that were, in essence, unchanged from a year ago or two years ago.
Roy obviously is far from the only culprit there and isn’t the only person whose job is in question.
Lamoriello built this roster and stood behind the core for years when the results weren’t up to par.
Plenty of individual players didn’t perform as expected, and plenty more got hurt.
Who and to what extent isn’t yet known, but where the past few breakup days primarily conveyed a defiant self-belief, the vibe Saturday — really, the vibe since the trade deadline — felt more like an acceptance that change is coming.
“You go to the consistency. I think we lacked that throughout the year,” Anders Lee said. “I think we had moments where we put good games together and didn’t get results. We had moments where we didn’t close out games. You can pinpoint a few, but start with those.
“You start playing consistent hockey over and over again each night, the results will come. We did our best to get to that, but we didn’t get to it nearly enough.”
And now the Islanders are going home.