Why are your assessments of this team so backwards? Roy can’t predict that the team in front of him would be out nearly half his defense and 2 critical forwards to start a quarter of the season. We are lucky to have any shot of even making the playoffs still under those conditions. To blame Roy for the start of this season is just foolish.
The blame does fall squarely on Lou for bringing in Lambert in the first place and for constructing such a mentally weak team. All these issues with the team from the pathetic power play to the late period collapses were present long before Roy took over. The guy had so much to fix from the basic premise is the idea is to play to win and get away from Trotz pusher mentality. This play not to lose mentality has morphed into a fear of losing mentality.
I don’t think Roy has been here a full year yet but he’s going to have to pull a rabbit out of his hat as he did to finish out the last season and get this teams heads collectively out of their asses. This Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde performances they have going on has to stop. As I said when he was hired Roy’s biggest challenge will have to be the Islanders mental game. One night before they showed how good they could be the next showed how bad they can be. It’s all mental issues and not being ready. Yes this will ultimately fall on Roy’s shoulders but the damage Lambert and to a lesser extent Trotz has done to the already fragile state of this roster will take a while to fix.
One of the biggest weaknesses of this team is the lack of presence of a pugilist who gets under the skin of the opposing team to put this team in the right state of mind to battle. Someone who’s cocksure of himself and lets the other team know it and force his own teammates into a battle. Look at this line up. They’re all a bunch of Boy Scouts. Not one player with a mean bone in his body. Too gentlemanly like they let the opposing teams walk all over them.
The biggest danger from all of this is that, as you are trying to do, Roy is made the scapegoat in all of this; Lou fires him and launches this team suck state into perpetuity.
Was Roy blind when he took the job on the roster? Or was it that he was ostracized forever and Lou extended an olive branch hoping this would work. Roy saw an opportunity to get in league, get air cover from Lou, possibly see that Lou is gonna l e on at some point, for Roy this was ALL upside.
Except, he’s done no better than Lambert. Lambert figured out that the 3rd/4th lines were dying and were ineffective. The first two lines are made up of players that are not good enough to carry a team, make big moments happen, etc.
The flaws of the first two lines were masked by the 3rd and 4th wearing down opponents and the two lines being optimistic. Now? All lines are exposed.
As a unit once an upon a time, it worked. Once the team tilted in the direction it’s currently on, the Isles ‘core’ players are not good enough horses for the ride.
Is that on Lou? Sure. He invested in these players. What does Vegas do? They upgrade and get out from under guys like this. Lou keeps them.
The Isles are trending into Montreal Canadians - a mess of a team, not much there, sort acting like a rebuild, sort of trying to compete. In another market, MTL is essentially CLB without a 100 year history. Just a reminder, MTL had their very own Barzal in Kovalev and went nowhere with him…
