The New York Islanders have been here before. This is the third consecutive playoff series where the Islanders have trailed 2-1 after three games. In the prior two matchups, New York has willed three straight wins to advance.

Credit the Islanders: they made key adjustments that helped lift them to victory against the Penguins and Bruins. But the Islanders were privileged to have a goaltender advantage in those contests, as Tristan Jarry and Tuukka Rask came up short against the Islanders formidable goaltending duo of Semyon Varlamov and Ilya Sorokin.

But no sane person would argue that the Islanders currently have the edge in goal as they face the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, arguably the league’s best goaltender. From a betting perspective, how does one balance the Islanders’ propensity to bounce back with an opponent that is clearly more well-rounded than New York’s previous foes?

Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Islanders

Saturday, June 19 – 8PM ET

The Islanders have a few promising green shoots to nurture. First, at 5-on-5, they have been the better team. New York posted the better expected goals and high-danger chances in all three games. In two of the three contests, the Islanders outshot the Lightning at 5-on-5.

Even in Thursday’s loss, a silver lining was visible. In Game 3, coach Barry Trotz utilized the power of having last change by pitting the Jean-Gabriel Pageau line against the Brayden Point line. It worked. The Pageau line roasted the Point line in terms of shots and quality chances. Furthermore, even though the Steven Stamkos trio walloped the Brock Nelson line on Thursday, the Stamkos line has zero goals through three games. Bottle up the Point and Stamkos lines and that should be a recipe for success over the span of a series.

The Lightning are a little bit like a bully. To mask insecurity and vulnerability, they take an uber-aggressive posture, and nowhere is this starker than with their rickety defensive group. In Game 1 especially, the Islanders’ skaters hounded the Lightning defencemen into relinquishing possession. The Islanders are not facing the one-man breakout mobility of the Bruins’ Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk.

The Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes both recognized that with the exception of Victor Hedman, there is a conspicuous lack of foot speed (Jan Rutta, Ryan McDonagh, Erik Cernak, David Savard) and steadiness (Mikhail Sergachev) on the Lightning back end. When the Islanders attack off the rush and force one-on-one battles around the net, Tampa Bay struggles.

But like the overused advice for job interviews, the Lightning are turning a weakness into a strength. The Lightning ask their defencemen to chase outside of the dots, and to enable that behaviour Tampa Bay urges its forwards to fill the middle. If the forward support isn’t there when the Lightning defencemen are pressuring the perimeter, the Islanders can get great scoring chances. But in Game 1, especially in the first period, Tampa Bay’s forecheck was so tepid it saw the Lightning backpedalling and the Islanders waltzing out of their end.

Game 2 brought a wholesale change, as the Lightning were more deliberate on their placement of the puck and faster to pressure the retriever on the forecheck. Consequentially, an emboldened Tampa Bay defensive group left a footprint. On Rutta’s tally, he hugged the boards when Adam Pelech tried to connect on a pass to Anthony Beauvillier. The turnover was scooped up by Bolts high forward Blake Coleman, and a half-dozen seconds later the puck was in the back of the net off Rutta’s blade. Tampa Bay disrupted New York’s momentum as it guided the puck into the neutral zone. 

The scoring chances manufactured by Tampa Bay reflect a variety of strategies employed to stretch New York out. In Game 2, Tampa Bay had one wing flying the zone or outright cherry-picking on missed shots and during New York’s line changes.

The Islanders’ defensive posture is a difficult nut to crack, but the Lightning have employed the Islanders’ line changes as a destabilizing mechanism. Ondrej Palat’s goal in Game 2 and Yanni Gourde’s in Game 3 are examples of Tampa Bay striking when New York is transitioning tired players off the ice. In Game 3, Tampa Bay also used a lot of switching and posting the third forward high to pull the New York defencemen above the circles.

Unlike in Game 1 where the Lightning were guilty of passing up opportunities to shoot, they have been more impulsive with smacking rubber on net in the past two games, and that has paid dividends. The Lightning’s shots from a distance and sharp angles saw them accrue more shot attempts at a higher clip than in Game 1. The genesis of Gourde’s goal was a retrieval off Coleman’s shot from the top of the left circle.

The Islanders’ team defence is normally durable and unforgiving, but even the most tensile objects under intense pressure will fracture. Part of the pressure has been self-inflicted, a byproduct of committing foolish penalties, which have supplied the Lightning with invaluable space and time on the man-advantage. But the Islanders need to make tweaks at 5-on-5 too. Scoring only four goals in three games is a clarion call for adjustments.

From a betting perspective, I expect the space the Lightning has found in the neutral zone to evaporate in Game 4. With scoring absent, I think Trotz will have the Islanders’ defencemen activate more. Off faceoffs and in transition, New York has had promising plays when a defenceman tried to gin up offence.  

The Lightning have demonstrated they can create turnovers off the forecheck, but the forecheck is at its most effective as a springboard for regroups. When New York is drained of energy and desperately punts the puck into the zone after a long period of defending in its own end, that is when the Lightning can swoop into the offensive zone with the most speed and capitalize off the loosest gaps. If New York begins to leave its own end more cleanly, as it did in Game 1, offence will be more difficult for Tampa Bay.

Aiding the Lightning forecheck is Varlamov’s clunky puck-handling skills, a deficiency Tampa Bay is keenly aware of and has looked to exploit. With the Islanders’ wings getting stomped on by the strong side defenceman along the boards, they need to look toward the middle or channel the kinetic energy of the area pass. 

For New York to even up the series, Varlamov needs to match Vasilevskiy. Varlamov outplayed Vasilevskiy in Game 1 in Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx). But in the last two games, he has dipped into the negatives while Vasilevskiy has excelled. Maybe most troubling, Vasilevskiy has finished with better GSAx’s in each successive game.

Ultimately, I believe Trotz is too good a coach for the Islanders to wilt and drop three straight. The Islanders have been excellent at home all season, and if they stay out of the penalty box and get better goaltending, a win is attainable. At +110, I like the home underdog.

Pick: Islanders +110