Facing a shortened preseason and expanded schedule, Peter DeBoer is adopting gridiron strategies to sharpen the Islanders’ defensive zone coverage and physical intensity before opening night.
New York Islanders hockey is all the way back, with one-ice training camp officially getting underway on Thursday morning.
It will be the shortest training camp in recent memory, with updates to the league's CBA that shortened both camp and the preseason. Additionally, the regular season expanded to 84 games, and the Islanders' season gets underway in just 12 days against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The team will be without Mathew Barzal for almost the entirety of training camp, but he has not been ruled out for the season opener yet.
The NHL's abbreviated preseason is the first for this league, but it's not the first major North American league to shorten their preseason while expanding the regular season. The first to do that was the NFL.
Islanders' Head Coach Peter DeBoer noted that he has changed his coaching structure for this preseason, thanks to the applicable lessons from watching early-season football in recent years.
"It's funny," DeBoer said Thursday. "I was watching a lot of the NFL stuff, and I've been listening to those guys talk about how they've gone to a lot less contact practices, which the analysts are saying has led to a lot more offense early in the season. I think we want to avoid that. I mean, we got right into D zone coverage today in contact.
"We've added a couple of scrimmages on the game days. If the group that isn't playing a preseason game, then that group is scrimmaging, and the other group that's playing is playing. So, if I'm going to make an error, and there's no right answer for it, I don't think anyone knows.
"But, we're going to make an error on trying to get into as many competitive situations as we can here before we get up and running."
DeBoer's philosophy is incredibly sound. The NFL, on average, has seen scoring increases early in the season before things regress to normal.
It stands to reason that the NHL could see an increase in sloppy play early in the season, especially this season with all the rapid changes to the calendar. If it does, DeBoer's made a sound plan to try and avoid that by rapidly integrating physicality and maximizing the amount of competitive situations the Islanders find themselves in early this season.
DeBoer also talked about special teams being a priority, but stated his first focus is cleaning up New York's leaky 5-on-5 play that led to the consistent barrage of chances against Ilya Sorokin.
