Game 26 of the Islanders’ season was typical, insofar as it told us little about the Islanders that we did not already know.
The Islanders were clean in their own end, giving up fewer than 20 shots for the third time in four games; they had the better chances but got just one past Logan Thompson and did not generate enough traffic around the crease; they felt they deserved far better than a 4-1 loss to the Capitals and were, mostly, correct to feel that way. These are all things we’ve seen before. They are all things Mathieu Darche has seen before.
The question for the rookie general manager, though, is how he’ll react to a nightmare 10-day stretch over which the Islanders have lost four of five games, scored just six goals, lost Jean-Gabriel Pageau for multiple weeks and lost both Alexander Romanov and Kyle Palmieri for the season.
Darche, over his first six months in the job, has looked every bit realistic and pragmatic. He has not cast himself as the sort of manager who, when faced with adversity, looks for a quick fix that might set the franchise back in the long term. And, on a realistic, pragmatic level, the right thing for him to do right now would be nothing.
