Just when the New York Islanders were putting a string of good results together after emerging from a seven-game winless streak, devastation arrives.
Adam Pelech left the ice after screaming in pain early in Friday’s gutsy win over the Senators in Ottawa. The Isles survived that departure — and the departure of Sebastian Aho later on the same shift — but this will be a major test to a lineup that doesn’t offer a lot of depth.
The Islanders already don’t use seventh defenseman Samuel Bolduc much when he’s in the lineup, and they claimed Mike Reilly off waivers from the Florida Panthers the day after Pelech’s injury. And when the Isles have been without Pelech for a sustained period of time, including last season, it has coincided with poor results.
However…there are a couple of reasons they might survive this Pelech injury better than past experiences. For one, Noah Dobson (24:49) and Alex Romanov (21:59) have taken on increasing loads, to the point that they, along with Ryan Pulock (23:01), were logging more ice time per game than Pelech (19:38) this season. That said, Pelech is clearly a leaned-on fixture in their top four, so his loss will hurt.
The second reason for very guarded hope is that the Islanders are no long set with immovable pairings as they were in recent seasons. Under Lane Lambert the past two seasons, the previously set-in-stone Adam Pelech-Ryan Pulock combo has been broken up as much as it’s been together, to the point that just the other day Lambert fielded a question from media on the topic:
All of this is, of course, likely putting lipstick on an injured pig. Though he’d be paired with Whomever In The Moment, Pelech was still the go-to shutdown guy. He’s the “Cobra” with the long stick that snuffs out offensive chances just when an opposition forward thinks they’ve dangled their way through.
To get by, they’re probably going to continue leaning on Romanov, lean more heavily on Scott Mayfield, and now, it seems, see what they can salvage out of newcomer veteran Mike Reilly.