The New York Islanders began special teams work at practice on Saturday, most specifically focusing on the power play, an area of concern for New York for the better part of a decade at this point.
The power play began work without star forward Mathew Barzal, who is not skating at camp and is shut down as he continues to deal with his knee injury. Per Andrew Gross of Newsday, the top unit skated in the following setup:
QB: Matthew Schaefer
LW: Cal Ritchie - Bumper: Bo Horvat - RW: Kyle Palmieri
Net Front: Brayden Schenn
Gross noted Schenn and Ritchie floated between their spots. Palmieri plugged into Barzal's usual position.
The players involved are not much of a surprise at all. The second unit lined up as follows:
QB: Tony DeAngelo
LW: Matias Maccelli - Bumper: Anthony Duclair- RW: Simon Holmstrom
Net Front: Emil Heineman
No Victor Eklund with the special teams to start the year. But it's a big opportunity for Matias Maccelli early in the year to lock down a spot on New York's secondary unit.
Fixing the special teams is one of the top priorities for Islanders' Head Coach Peter DeBoer, who spoke candidly about the man advantage on Saturday.
"It's not a quick fix," DeBoer said. "It hasn't been good for quite a while. We're looking to take steps and build a foundation and try and get this to be good going forward. Now, you cross your fingers and hope it's a quick fix. I'm very confident it's going to be improved. We're not easing into it."
The first step in addressing any issue is declaring it a problem. DeBoer, more than any other recent Islanders coach, is heavily acknowledging the long stretch of futile New York power plays. It's easy for a coach to come in and look at one year and say yeah, that's the problem.
But with the Islanders, it's become an ongoing thing to have a mediocre to outright bad power play, consistently finishing in the bottom 10 in the league.
DeBoer acknowledging that shows how in tune he is with the franchise, but he wasn't finished. DeBoer went on to directly state the biggest issue with the power play.
"There are some things that we have to do," DeBoer continued. "[Things we] have to correct in order to give ourselves a chance to have a decent power play here that are very obvious when you dig into the analytics of it and watch the tape. These guys are getting that front and center. The good power plays are interchangeable. There's a lot of motion. There's a lot of movement. There are a lot of guys moving to different parts of the ice, and they're interchangeable in their positioning."
"I felt this group was really stagnant," DeBoer continued, ripping apart New York's old way of playing a man up. "Almost deferring to 'Oh, that's my spot there, that's your spot,' so that's a small piece of it. There's a lot of other things, but I think that's probably the biggest thing is using the whole zone and being interchangeable, like all the elite power plays are.
"We have positions we want to start in that we have penciled in, but then you've got to play hockey," DeBoer said. "You can't get married to your spot at the expense of having a good power play. If you're not in your spot, you fill someone else's spot until you end up back in your spot. It's seamless. So, that takes a while to get. Especially when it hasn't been a priority."
That's about as open, honest, and forthcoming as you might get a coach to be. The single most frustrating about the Islanders' power play over the years has been its predictability, where every other team knows the Islanders want the puck to do, every single time.
That's what DeBoer's trying to change. That, as he said, takes time. But if they can become more fluid positionally, it opens up so much more ice and creates way more opportunities.
DeBoer said the changes are similar to what he's hoping to do with the team at five-on-five, too.
"We're going to continue to work at that, and it's a lot like of our five-on-five game too," DeBoer said. "We want to be interchangeable in order to play fast, but to get seamless in that, you need reps, you need time. So it's going to take us time to continue to work at both those things."
