ST. LOUIS — It is way too early to start breaking down statistical rankings, but the trend through the first three games of the Islanders season is in keeping with the trend from the final 37 of last season.
That is to say, Patrick Roy’s club appears to have a good handle on its five-on-five defense.
And, as an added bonus, the penalty kill has found some rhythm after an awful opening night, pitching two straight shutouts on this road trip — a small but important piece of encouragement after how things flew off the rails at four-on-five a year ago.
Monday’s 6-2 win over the Avalanche, in which a high-powered offensive team featuring Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar was held frustrated, marked the sort of performance the Islanders could hang their hats on after two games of good-but-not-quite-good-enough resulted in two losses to open the season.
“We have the ability to clog things up,” Anders Lee said. “Obviously it’s gonna be tough to stop Nate from skating the way he does and Cale, at times, no matter what. But I think overall, we did a good job of limiting them as much as we could.
“It’s a team that thrives off turnovers. That was evident. If we made a little bit of a mistake, it’s coming right back at us. At certain times, we did a good job with the puck.”
Of course, this is nothing new for the Islanders — a team that made its bones on playing “boring” hockey and grinding out 3-2 wins.
Roy’s version is not quite so conservative as Barry Trotz’s back in the day, and based on the evidence thus far, it would be hard to trot out the B-word to describe this team.
But it is a squad built to win from goaltending on out, with structure and defense coming before scoring firepower. That much is still the same.
“We’ve been playing very well defensively since the training camp and exhibition games, the first two games,” Roy said. “I think we can build on that, absolutely.”
Monday night marked the first time that the Islanders had scored six goals in a road game against the Quebec/Colorado franchise since a 7-2 win over the Nordiques on Dec. 15, 1990, per team statistician Eric Hornick.
It was also the Isles’ first time scoring at least six goals in Denver since Nov. 21, 1978 against the Rockies.
On the ice from Long Island
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The Islanders did not hold practice on Tuesday in St. Louis.
