Cam Charron's Hockey Stats

For the Islanders, that was the kind of loss that makes you think “ah gee, that always seems to happen to us”, but you never really notice it from the winning end.

Following the game, Islanders coach Lane Lambert chastised his team’s effort, noting that the Isles made 23 giveaways to the Canucks 9. Knowing that the home scorers for the Islanders home rink can sometimes be juiced, I was a little skeptical. I turned on this game, as I usually do, shortly after it ended, and was shocked at just how poorly the Islanders defencemen managed the puck in their own end. They also failed to enter the Canucks zone often, including the forwards.

I’m going to keep this post pretty short, but for the free portion of the post, it’s fair to mention that Lambert’s assertion is absolutely correct. This was not a good game from the Islanders, a team I’ve come around on this season since they’re normally very strong at 5v5. They let the Canucks dictate the pace of the game, and to the Canucks credit, they kept pressuring the Isles into making mistakes.

The game didn’t flow particularly well–even though there were 11 goals and just 49 faceoffs (anything under 50 is an indicator of a game that moved along quickly) it was pretty disjointed. One team had a lot of difficulty stringing pucks together, and the other team was the 2023 Vancouver Canucks, so there wasn’t a lot of good action on either side.

Even if you’re on #TeamTank when it comes to the Canucks, it’s worthwhile to pick up a win like this every now and then and keep the game fun. The Canucks were down 2, from circumstance, not from being horrificly outplayed, and they came back to win, and it would have been a convincing two-goal win if not for a Noah Dobson blast with the net empty and 49 seconds left. Sometimes it’s good to turn your brain off and appreciate this sport. It’s a silly game.