It was a year ago, almost to the day, that Lane Lambert pulled the plug on an early season experiment that saw Simon Holmstrom skate on the top line with Bo Horvat and Mat Barzal.
Lambert went back to that configuration a month later, but again, it didn’t last — and neither did much else last season, which is why the Islanders signed Anthony Duclair to begin with.
Now that Duclair is hurt, for a period that has only been described as “long term” by the team (which had yet to put Duclair on long-term injured reserve before Tuesday’s game against the Red Wings), the Islanders are back in the same situation — and it is again Holmstrom who will get the first shot at a role alongside Barzal and Horvat.
“I think we need someone with some good speed to play with Bo and Barzy,” Patrick Roy said Tuesday morning. “And we need someone that’s capable of making plays. So I feel like whoever I would put there, I would feel comfortable, but I think Simon would be a player that could feel [good in] that spot. Curious to see how he’s gonna do.”
Holmstrom has shown growth early this season on the third line — a unit whose performance Roy had been thrilled with before Duclair went down.
But much of that was in areas suited to a bottom-six role. Holmstrom was playing more physical hockey, looking defensively sound and displaying good chemistry with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Anders Lee.
He was not shooting the puck more — actually he was shooting the puck less — recording just one five-on-five shot on goal in the season’s first five games.
If this configuration — which also saw Casey Cizikas jump to what had been Holmstrom’s spot on the third line, with Liam Foudy being called up to play on the fourth line — is going to work, then that is going to have to change.
“I don’t think it necessarily changes our mindset,” Barzal told The Post. “We still want to play hard and win, play the right way. [Holmstrom] and Dukie, they both have good skill and Homer can shoot the puck.”
That, of course, has been what the Islanders have uniformly said about Holmstrom’s shot since he was called up, and it has rarely played out that way.
Here is a chance for the Swede to change that, and shift his own narrative along the way.
“I think stay on the puck, try to get open, try and create some space,” Holmstrom told reporters Monday. “Still play my game. Just be an option out there.”
It is as ironclad a guarantee as exists that there will be scoring opportunities for Holmstrom if he is on the ice with Barzal and Horvat.
That is what they do. The top line, with Duclair, produced 33 scoring chances in five games over which, Barzal said Tuesday, they had not “broken out in a game yet.”
“I think the play itself, the quality has been good,” Barzal, whose three points this season have all come either on the power play or at five-on-six, said. “I think I’ve been playing pretty good hockey. But it’s just — the puck hasn’t really found the back of the net as easy as it sometimes does. … And then with Duke going down, it sucks. Guys gotta step up.”
The question comes in what Holmstrom will make of those chances, and in how much patience Roy will have if things do not click right away.
“Things can turn around very fast,” Roy said. “That’s the start of the game, we’ll see how it goes. … Casey can be on any line and I know he’s gonna do the work. Same thing with Simon. We’ll start the game that way and see how it goes.”
