John Tonelli’s barometer for a head coach will always be Al Arbour, understandably.
But the original No. 27 doesn’t think Patrick Roy is half bad.
“You bring in a guy like Patrick who you know, he’s an automatic character, he’s fiery. There’s no doubt about it, he’s gonna get the guys juiced up and ready to go,” Tonelli said after the Islanders announced a financial commitment to support adaptive hockey on Long Island as part of the Stadium Series legacy project on Tuesday. “I’m not gonna lie to you, that’s the way I played the game. Ready to go, a lot of energy. If I didn’t play with that energy, I was not effective.”
Tuesday’s match against the Kraken marked Roy’s eighth game in charge, with the Islanders having gone 3-3-1 over the first seven.
Thanks in part to the Flyers having played two more games, the Islanders entered the night eight points back of third place in the Metropolitan Division and four behind the Red Wings and Maple Leafs for the second wild-card spot.
The difference between the Islanders under Roy and under Lane Lambert, though, is already clear for those watching, with the Isles playing a much more possession-oriented and offensive game.
As for wins and losses, though, the Islanders still seem to be finding their footing.
“He’s had an opportunity to see the little things that were missing,” Tonelli said of Roy. “It’s not big, it’s little. And if you focus on those little things, you put them all together, then it becomes big. I think he’s done a great job at picking little spots that we’re not doing that well in.
“Those spots in some cases are obvious, like allowing power-play goals. Our [penalty kill] used to be pretty damn good. So those are things we gotta work on.”
Roy is trying to work on the penalty kill, which ranks dead last in the league, along with fundamentals and habits he said Monday contribute at times to the Islanders playing .500 hockey.
“If you go, let’s say, on [analytics service] SportsLogiq, all our numbers are getting better in all the areas,” Roy said Monday. “Defensively, offensively, but we still play .500 hockey in some ways. And now it’s our fundamentals. How we’re gonna compete, how we’re gonna put our stick on the ice.
“And the compete is probably the thing that — I want us to be better along the wall, I want us to be better in our one-on-ones. Especially offensively. There’s ways for us to get the puck net-front and stuff like this.
“Structure-wise, we don’t have to be perfect. Where we need to be perfect, as much as possible, is in our compete and the way we use our stick. I thought that was the difference [in Saturday’s loss] against Calgary.”
Making the playoffs this season is the immediate goal, and it will take a strong final two months for the Islanders to do so.
Whether or not Roy can help make that happen will likely depend just as much on those factors as on the structural changes he’s already implemented.
“I always think back, how do you make 24 or 25 guys all happy and all driving towards the same goal. That’s a tough task,” Tonelli said. “Some coaches can get it. Some coaches can’t. I know for sure that Lane tried his best. He tried 120, 130 percent to get our team to play with more.
“It’s not that it’s not there. It’s there. I love these guys. We got a great team. And when we’re playing on all cylinders, we’re gonna do a lot of good things.”
