Why were we 28th on the PP though? I don't think it was because of lack of skill, I think the special teams is a lot to do with coaching to be honest..
I mean do you really think that there were that many teams that could ice a better 5 players out on the ice than the Islanders?
It was skill, but not so much in the sense of overall talent level, but in the sense of how the talent was distributed on the team and on the PP.
Essentially, our PP was made insanely predictable due to having no righties that could do much of anything. This made the entire left side of our PP more or less useless, as we either had guys like Strome and Boychuk (and sometimes even Hamonic or Clutterbuck) or you have lefties like Bailey playing out of position on that side. IMO, this is where we felt the departure of the lost players from summer 2016 the hardest, as not having Okposo on the left half boards changed our PP dramatically. Opposing PKs could lean to the strong side without worrying about the weak side, and that makes PKing about as easy as PKing gets. When Ho-Sang got promoted to the first unit, the PP looked completely different and way more effective.
That said, this season, it looks like we'll have Eberle, Ho-Sang, Barzal and Pulock as the options to play the left side, and that looks e to be a pretty significant upgrade. I'd be shocked if our PP was anywhere near as bad as it was last season, though we'll see how much of an upgrade it proves to be.
