What Rangers can learn from the Islanders’ small-scale youth movement

The lesson that applies to the Rangers was reinforced by the Islanders in their surprising but not necessarily stunning sweep of the Penguins. That is, it is not the quantity of young players in the lineup that counts, but their quality.

You might have been able to guess that the Islanders finished the season as the NHL’s seventh-oldest team, per analysis of 20-man lineups by RosterResource.com. They have only five players aged 25 and under who made an impact. Yet the team somehow was able to get by in a league that practices Darwinism and has all but eradicated fossil fuel. Able to get by the first round in which they trailed for a total of 4:51 over four games, too.

Because the impact created by the Yoots of Uniondale in this domination of former champions was staggering. You don’t need to skew young when your second-youngest player, Mathew Barzal, 21, is consistently the most electric player on the ice as No. 13 was in this breakout performance. You don’t need to skew young when a pair of 24-year-old defensemen, Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock, form the tandem that goes toe-to-toe with Sidney Crosby and becomes a large part of the reason that No. 87 never could get on the board.

You don’t need to skew young when your youngest player, Anthony Beauvillier, makes the critical play at the critical moment, the way he did a lot more often than once, and you don’t need to skew young with Devon Toews operating at close to maximum efficiency on the blue line.

It is wide open now following Tampa Bay’s shocking sweep by Columbus. The race for the Stanley Cup has become the chase for the 1972 Democratic Party nomination for president after Ed Muskie cried (or didn’t) in New Hampshire. It would be foolish to dismiss the Islanders, whose campaign is being led by wise old heads Lou Lamoriello and Barry Trotz, who have remodeled the organization and team in their own formidable images.

Credit where credit is due to former GM Garth Snow, whose regime produced every one of the aforementioned quintet at the draft table, getting Barzal at 16th overall in 2015 immediately after the Bruins’ triple bypass at 13-14-15; Beauvillier at 28th overall the same year; Pelech 65th overall in 2012; Pulock 15th overall in 2013; and Toews in the fourth round in 2014. There were some big misses in there, too, don’t get me wrong, but Snow’s ultimate downfall was not a consequence of an inability to identify talent, but rather of his studied quirkiness.

Anyway.

The Islanders are an older team packed with veterans to act as pillars in the room. But they’re not exactly an old team. Do you know who is an old team? The Penguins, that’s who, second-longest in the tooth to only the Over the Hill Gang in LA, according to RosterResource.com. And they looked it from beginning to end of a series the Islanders had under control for, say, no fewer than eight of the 12 periods.

Pittsburgh seemed stale and played for the most part at a February pace. It is humorous to hear, at the same time, that Columbus benefited from having to pound down the stretch in order to qualify for the playoffs but that Pittsburgh was left enervated by taking the same path to the postseason. Truth is, the Penguins were outplayed and outworked from the top of the lineup to the bottom, outplayed in nets where Robin Lehner was markedly superior to Matt Murray, and outdone behind the bench, where Mike Sullivan was outcoached.

The Islanders were faster and played faster. Crosby always had waves of defenders coming at and surrounding him, even 150 feet away from the net. Evgeni Malkin, who had a down year and may need to go in order for GM Jim Rutherford to begin the necessary renovation process, rarely had time or space. The Islanders were always on the right side of the puck. Pittsburgh had no answers.

Jordan Eberle, setting himself up for free agency, was a wizard with the puck on his stick around the net. Brock Nelson, a pending free agent who would be out of his mind not to test the market off a playoff performance that could elevate him above Kevin Hayes on the July 1 most-wanted list, had a major impact. So of course did the redoubtable Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck Wrecking Crew. Senior Islander Josh Bailey checked every box.

But it was Barzal who captivated and dazzled right from Game 1 with multiple game-changing and series-defining dynamic plays memorialized by his dash up the ice and stutter-step in the slot to set up Bailey’s Game 1 overtime winner. It was No. 13 accelerating past No. 87 as the most dynamic player on the ice. And behind him, it was Pelech-Pulock, it was Beauvillier, it was Toews.
It was a Young Gang of Five.

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