What’s worse for the Islanders right now — their lack of power play production or their lack of power play opportunities?
Both are on a historically bad pace.
At a lowly 10.5 percent, including a scoreless streak that stretched to 0-for-25 in Tuesday’s 2-0 loss to the Senators, the Islanders are on pace to be the fifth-worst man-advantage unit since the NHL started keeping stats in 1977-78.
At just 2.44 opportunities per game, they’re also on pace to get the seventh-fewest power play chances of any team over the same span, though interestingly, three of the teams worse than them are also playing this season.
Whichever of those you find more offensive, the situation looks untenable.
The Islanders haven’t scored a power play goal in front of their home crowd since Nov. 30, and when they do get a call, it often saps their momentum, with UBS Arena regularly booing the repeated failures to enter the puck into the zone or get a shot off.
“We want to score a power play goal like everybody else,” captain Anders Lee said. “It’s a thorn in our side right now.”
That is understating it to an extreme.
Coach Patrick Roy has repeatedly changed the units around, and it has not helped.
The penalty kill — also on a historically awful pace — has surprisingly found some competence over the last week, with the Islanders focusing lots of energy on special teams in practice.
Not so for the power play, and Roy sounded out of answers Tuesday night.
“I think we need to trust what we’re doing and we gotta trust the guys that are out there,” he said. “We got some talent. I think sometimes it’s just simplify things and throw pucks at the net. And that’s what I’ve been showing [in film sessions]. Throw pucks at the net, jam and score on the rebound. Score on the tip and sometimes that’s all you need to get some confidence, then all of a sudden things start to open up for us.”
In other words, there’s not much to do here other than hope a group of players that hasn’t done anything on the power play all year suddenly starts executing.
It’s not the most inspiring of plans, but more than halfway through the season, there’s no silver bullet lurking.
“We’re constantly trying to get better on it,” Noah Dobson said. “It’s no secret it’s not good enough. We gotta do a better job.”