The New York Islanders will continue their seven-game homestand Tuesday with a matchup likely to conjure up memories of their consecutive trips to the NHL semifinals in 2020 and 2021.
Unfortunately for the Islanders, their current prospects are far cloudier now than at the start of the homestand.
The undermanned Islanders will look to halt a skid when they host the red-hot Tampa Bay Lightning in a battle of Eastern Conference rivals in Elmont, N.Y.
The Islanders were off Monday after taking a 4-1 loss to the Washington Capitals Sunday afternoon. The Lightning extended their winning streak to seven games Saturday when they beat the host New York Rangers, 4-1.
Seven members of the Islanders’ active roster remain from the 2020 and 2021 teams, each of whom fell to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Lightning in the NHL semifinals.
The familiar foes and faces will see an Islanders squad in a more depleted and vulnerable position than 12 days prior, when New York concluded a 6-1-0 road trip. New York has gone 1-3-1 over the first five games of the homestand, during which it lost two more players from the 2020-21 squad.
Jean-Gabriel Pageau is week-to-week after sustaining an upper-body injury against the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 22. Kyle Palmieri will miss six to eight months after requiring surgery to repair the torn left ACL he sustained in Friday’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Islanders also lost defenseman Alexander Romanov for the season Nov. 18, when he was shoved into the boards by the Dallas Stars’ Mikko Rantanen.
“If you know this group, you understand they will never give up,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said Sunday afternoon. “This is not a group that feels sorry for themselves.”
Resilience is nothing new for the Lightning, who have reached the playoffs in each of the last eight seasons. They’re tied with the Avalanche for the second-longest active playoff streak in the NHL behind the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Tampa Bay, which hasn’t won a playoff round since falling to the Avalanche in the 2022 Stanley Cup Final, opened the season with six losses in its first seven games (1-4-2). But the Lightning have gone 15-3-0 since Oct. 25 and will enter Tuesday with 34 points, tied for the most in the Eastern Conference with the Carolina Hurricanes ahead of Monday’s action.
Tampa Bay has outscored the opposition 30-10 during its current winning streak, a span in which it hasn’t faced a multi-goal deficit.
“Honestly, we’ve got a really good vibe going,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said.
Brandon Hagel scored twice Saturday as he extended his goal-scoring streak to five games. Hagel has eight goals overall during the winning streak while Jake Guentzel has added six goals.
“It’s pretty congested in the Eastern Conference, so we’ve had to go on this run just to put ourselves in a little bit of breathing room,” Cooper said. “It’s really tight, so we have to make up for our slow start.”
This will be the first of three matchups between these two teams over a 12-day span. They’ll face off again Dec. 6 in Tampa Bay and return to Long Island for a third clash Dec. 13.
