For The New York Islanders, The End Of A Season Is Also Likely The End Of An Era

The previous two playoff runs to end with an overtime loss in Game 6 for the Islanders were accompanied by optimism that shone through the heartache that accompanies such a quick end to a team’s pursuit of a Stanley Cup.

But there was no such metaphorical light showing Friday night, when it felt like an era ended along with a season as the Islanders fell to the Hurricanes 2-1 at UBS Arena.

Minutes after Paul Stastny’s oddly angled goal sent the Hurricanes to the conference semifinals, the home locker room was silent except for the ripping of tape and the hushed voices of a half-dozen or so players speaking to reporters.

The sights were even more telling than the sounds, or the lack thereof.

Cal Clutterbuck, the fourth-liner whose pugnacious style of play has begun taking a greater toll on him as he hits his mid-30s, shuffled out of the room to an off-limits area. Fellow fourth-liner Matt Martin sat with his hands folded at his locker. Captain Anders Lee spoke in his skates, as if beginning the task of undressing would have delivered a dose of reality as jarring as Stastny’s goal.

The most poignant sight was that of Zach Parise, staring ahead in a near-catatonic state. The 38-year-old Parise, with lockers empty on each side of him, sat unmoving except for holding a skate in his hand and occasionally picking at the skin on his fingers.

“You’ve got to be there for each other,” defenseman Ryan Pulock said. “You’re there for each other all year. You’ve got to help your friends out, because it sucks. It’s not where we want to be. It’s not a situation we want to be in. We’re a close group in here.”

Pulock sighed lightly.

“It’s gonna sting for days to come,” he said. “But I think there’s things we can learn, and a fire inside to have yourself prepared for next year and get back to playoff hockey.”

Martin and head coach Lane Lambert — the latter of whom spoke in a far raspier tone than usual — also used “sting” multiple times to describe the raw aftermath of the loss.

“We’ll wear this one for a little while,” Martin said. “Get back on the horse and get ready for next year.”

Crystal ball readings in the immediate aftermath of a season-ending loss are always delivered with some degree of uncertainty. There will always be turnover within a roster and no one can ever tell how even seemingly cosmetic changes to a team will impact its makeup and chemistry.

But the future seems especially murky for the Islanders, a team that’s been returned closer to whole than maybe any team in sports over the last three seasons and certainly has a more experienced core than anyone in the New Work area, at the very least.

Ten of the players who were in uniform Friday were also on the ice in Edmonton on Sept. 17, 2020, when the Islanders’ stirring bubble run from the qualifying round to the conference finals ended with a 2-1 overtime loss to the Lightning in Game 6.

“I think the bar has always been set high,” Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield said in a postgame Zoom late that night. “I think this year shows maybe other people how high we think it is. It hurts now, but that’s a silver lining if you want to look at it that way. It’s trending in the right direction.”

Six players — Clutterbuck, Lee, Martin and Mayfield along with Casey Cizikas and Brock Nelson — were also with the Islanders in 2015, when they fell to the Capitals in a seven-game first round series. And Cizikas, Martin and Nelson were all on the 2013 team that began the Islanders’ most successful post-dynasty era with a sprint to the playoffs in the lockout-shortened 48-game season and a six-game loss to the Penguins in the first round.

Only one other New York-area player has been with his team since 2013: The Rangers’ Chris Kreider.

“We were right there,” then-head coach Jack Capuano said following the season-ending 4-3 overtime loss on May 11, 2013. “Like I told the guys afterward, there’s nothing as a coaching staff (that) we can (say) that’s going to ease the feeling or the disappointment that they feel right now, But we took huge strides as an organization.”

While the ultimate prize has remained out of their grasp, its hard to undersell just how many positive steps the Islanders have taken over the last 11 seasons. They rank 13th in the NHL with 940 points since the start of the 2013 season after ranking 27th in a then-30-team league from 2000-01 through 2011-12 — ahead of only the Panthers and a pair of turn-of-the-century expansion teams, the Blue Jackets and the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets. The Islanders were 22nd in the NHL in points in the 22 seasons from 1989-90 through 2011-12, ahead of only 1990s expansion teams and behind one of them, the Sharks.

It is no knock on the Islanders to say this run likely peaked with the team seizing the unusual pandemic-related circumstances surrounding the playoff formats in the seasons in which they mounted their back-to-back runs to the NHL’s final four. Those near-misses infused the core with a championship-caliber pedigree and a knowledge of what it takes to get that close, and how much it hurts not to take the final steps.

They were also a reward to a fan base that suffered through far too many verbs beginning with re- — including but not limited to rebuilds, retools, renovations and redesigns — as well as multiple recidivist owners and almost-owners. Anyone who was at Nassau Coliseum for the Game 6 overtime win over the Lightning in the NHL semifinals on June 23, 2021 will never forget how the building shook with a joy that seemed unreachable for so long and felt unimaginable especially just 15 months earlier.

General manager Lou Lamoriello continued rewarding the core when he kept the team together after a COVID-wrecked 2021-22 as well as in late January, when he acquired Bo Horvat from the Canucks with the Islanders in the midst of a 4-8-3 skid and situated outside the playoff picture.

The Islanders going for it with a flawed team was a notable and welcome achievement in the era of the tank. But reaching the playoffs with 93 points — the fewest by an Eastern Conference team in a full season since the spring of 2016 — and going 1-for-18 on the power play against the Hurricanes served as reminders of the gap that must be broached to re-emerge as a Stanley Cup contender.

Whether the 80-year-old Lamoriello remains on the job or not, the Islanders — with a franchise goalie in Ilya Sorokin as well as first-liners Horvat and Mathew Barzal each locked up through the early 2030s — are not about to usher in a rebuild during their early years in UBS Arena.

But on Friday night, it was clear that if the Islanders are to finally win that elusive fifth Stanley Cup, it’ll be hoisted by a different group of players — a reality already absorbed inside a silent locker room filled with players who grasp what this era has meant to each other as well as the Islanders.

“This group’s been together for a while and we had success and we’ve gotten close,” Pulock said. “That fire inside — you want to get there, you want to win.”

“The longer you’re in this league, (the) harder you realize it is to win,” Martin said. “And every time you have an opportunity, you try to make the best of it.

“But it sucks.”