Scanning through the other teams in the Metropolitan Division, this feature will take a peak at what everyone else has been up to over the off-season and what to expect heading into the 2025-26 season. First up, we covered the New York Rangers, now we hop across the borough to check out the New York Islanders.
Key changes
Additions: The big pickup for NYI this summer was Jonathan Drouin as a free agent for $8 million over a two-year contract ($4.0m cap hit). Drouin had a semi-successful career reboot the last
two seasons with Colorado but only played 43 games last season. He’s been productive as a supporting player when healthy (scoring 56 points in 2023-24, and 37 points last season) but the big question on him remains how much a team will get out of him..NYI also won the derby to add high-scoring Russian forward Maxim Shabanov (67 points in 65 KHL games last season) but they 25-year old will have to prove how his size (5’8, 160 pounds) will hold up in the NHL. David Rittich was also signed as a goalie option with Semyon Varlamov dealing with a lower body injury.
Losses: The Islanders opted to trade Noah Dobson instead of signing him, so they’ll lose out on a defender who notched 109 points over the last two seasons…Matt Martin retired after a long career, though he only played 32 games last season. GM Lou Lamoriello also was let go in a big reset off the ice.
Projected lineup (from nhl.com)
Jonathan Drouin — Bo Horvat — Kyle Palmieri
Anders Lee — Mathew Barzal — Simon Holmstrom
Anthony Duclair — Jean-Gabriel Pageau — Maxim Shabanov
Maxim Tsyplakov — Casey Cizikas — Emil Heineman
Alexander Romanov / Tony DeAngelo
Adam Pelech / Ryan Pulock
Matthew Schaefer / Scott Mayfield
Ilya Sorokin
David Rittich
New GM Mathieu Darche is angling for the future by trading Dobson mainly for two first round picks that won’t help this year, shortly after NYI traded long-time leader Brock Nelson for futures at the last trade deadline. As such, the right side of the defense looks weak with Pulock and Mayfield slowing down in major ways from their primes a few years ago and boom/bust DeAngelo set to step into the Dobson puck-moving role. The Isles were unable or unwilling to dump some veterans, so they have mis-mash of older players mixed with some younger options and based on the above don’t have a spot for Pierre Engvall (who still has a $3.0m cap hit for the next five years, courtesy of a Lamoriello signing).
This isn’t necessarily a bad lineup or a terrible team by any means, but it’s not one that looks like it has a large upside. Last year only two Islanders had over 50 points (Horvat and Lee). They didn’t have a single player with 30 goals, or even 30 assists (though Barzal would have topped the latter, had he not missed much of the season with injury). It’s not a very dynamic team these days and it didn’t change much. Their returning top-5 scorers from last year are going to be the following age this season: 30, 35, 34, 24 and 33. Even the young guy (Holmstrom) is fairly anonymous and analogous of the team — kinda good, but not a huge standout.
Almost every team out there at least has preseason hopes to make a run for a playoff spot, but eight teams have to fall short. This Islanders team fell short last season by nine points, and the biggest change is that their key players are a year older than last time.
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The big questions
Will Schaefer make a run at the lineup? The Islanders got a huge bonus by winning the draft lottery and moving from 10th to 1st and getting to select Schaefer. The youngster projects as a future first-pairing defenseman and might even be good enough to make the NHL lineup this season. How he progresses and handles the NHL competition will be something worth watching, the Islanders could badly use a dynamic defender. Schaefer should be that eventually, but can he start off right away?
How will Patrick Roy do as an inherited coach? Darche elected to keep Roy in his job as head coach, but in most cases in the NHL it seems like this is a ‘dead man walking’ position, especially since the Islanders missed the playoffs last season and arguably are expected to do about the same this year as the team resets their deck and moves to the future. Roy is always appointment TV with his fiery demeanor and if things start out rocky the whispers about his seat getting hot could make it an uncomfortable time on the Island.
Potential Outcomes
Here we paint some pictures of a semi-realistic best and worst case scenarios for the upcoming season..
Reasonable best case scenario — Ilya Sorokin rebounds to his 2021-23 form, where he often carried the team further than they deserved to go. Youngsters like Holmstrom, Tsyplakov, Shabanov and Schaefer take steps and help supplant a decent cast (Barzal, Horvat, Palmieri, Lee) and Drouin stays healthy to make the Isles a tough out on a nightly basis. The new assistant coaches improve the dual 31st ranked power play and 31st ranked penalty kill enough that the team is right in the mix for a playoff spot and even stays ahead of the fray a little to sneak into the postseason.
Reasonable worst case scenario — The defense doesn’t perform well and Sorokin isn’t able to be a difference-maker as a result. Roy’s coaching becomes erratic and the team goes into a slump of inconsistency. Key players like Barzal and Drouin (each limited to 30-something games last season) again miss significant time and there isn’t the scoring depth to stand up. Special teams doesn’t improve enough, and NYI stays bottom-quartile there, rendering them essentially as a non-factor. As a result, the Isles slip towards the bottom of the division and aren’t much of a playoff threat by the Olympic break in February.
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Darche has NYI looking deeper into the future for the next wave and will have his hands full cleaning up some of the mess that Lamoriello left him. Time is the best solution for that and the Isles’ reboot achieved a big boost by winning the draft lottery. They’ll have a puncher’s chance to try their best to get in the playoff race, but for the short-term this looks like a team in transition that isn’t primed for a great 2025-26 season and pointing towards a bottom-half finish within the division this year.
