The good news for the Islanders: there is over a week between now and opening night.
The bad news: based on the evidence of Friday’s preseason finale at UBS Arena, they need every day they can get.
A lineup made up solely of NHL talent was beaten handily by a Devils team where about half the skaters were AHLers to the tune of 3-0 — a varsity-JV matchup conducted in a funhouse mirror.
Twenty-four hours after coach Lane Lambert ripped his team’s performance in a preseason loss to the Flyers, an ostensibly better Islanders squad turned in an arguably worse game, albeit eliciting less concern out of the head coach.
“Last exhibition game’s always a tough one to play,” Lambert said. “Guys are looking forward to next weekend, the regular season. I thought that in order to generate more, we had to be harder and we weren’t hard enough. And I thought their goaltender [Akira Schmid] played well when he had to, but we didn’t have enough traffic in front of the net.”
Of course, the preseason is pretty far from the real thing, even in the best of circumstances, and everyone will forget all about this by the time the puck drops next Saturday against the Sabres.
Still, it would have been nice to put something good on tape.
In what amounted to a last chance to make an impression in a fight for an everyday role, neither Simon Holmstrom, Julien Gauthier or Oliver Wahlstrom showed much — though in fairness, neither did any of the players whose jobs are already locked in.
The closest thing to real concern following the game came from Brock Nelson, when asked about the team’s structure.
“I wouldn’t say I feel like we’re where we want to be, especially coming off that game,” Nelson said. “But I also think everyone here believes in one another that we’ll be alright.”
Hudson Fasching and Pierre Engvall were both called day-to-day for maintenance after missing Friday’s loss. Lambert said he is unconcerned about their availability for the regular season opener.
Kyle Palmieri played in his first preseason game Friday after missing the first two weeks of training camp with an undisclosed injury, skating 14:12 with two shots on net.
“He looked like a power forward tonight,” Lambert said. “He used his body, drove pucks to the net. I liked his game.”
For the first time all camp, the Islanders played Mathew Barzal on Bo Horvat’s left, switching Holmstrom to the right, which Lambert called an experiment.