It’s not hard to tell that Mathew Barzal is a little tired of talking about his injury.
You can’t blame him for that.
It has been the primary topic surrounding Barzal since he collided with Craig Smith on a knee-to-knee hit in Boston in February.
Even when he made it back to the Islanders in time for the playoffs, there was a question of how effective he could be and whether his right knee would be a hindrance.
Nor did it help that the answer turned out to be “Yes.” Barzal scored twice in the six-game playoff loss to Carolina, but didn’t seem to be fully recovered. The Islanders were forced to wait until now for Barzal to return to his usual level of play.
“It’s tough to come back off injury,” Barzal said Saturday. “I had, like, three skates before I played in the playoffs. Lungs weren’t really there, legs weren’t really there.”
The thing about a player like Barzal, though, is that he can make the waiting worth it.
Even during the first three practices of training camp, as small and meaningless a sample size as could be, Islanders coach Lane Lambert can notice how much more at ease Barzal is moving compared to late April.
“The difference, obviously, coming back from the injury and going right into the playoffs wasn’t an easy situation,” Lambert said. “I thought he did a good job of it. But in saying that, right now if you’re watching him and you isolate on him: the effort, the speed, just the dynamic play of his, he certainly looks in a really good place right now. He’s had a great summer.”
Since the Islanders are bringing back mostly the same group of players as last season, their hopes of improving rest on those players doing more and being available for longer.
They can’t control injuries, but a healthy Barzal playing next to a healthy Bo Horvat on the first line is the sort of recipe the Islanders have wanted to create since Barzal won the Calder Trophy with 85 points in 2017-18.
He has not scored more than 62 points in a season since, in part because the Islanders have played a more defense-oriented system and in part due to the team’s struggles to surround him with the right pieces — though he likely would have eclipsed that total last season had he not been injured.
This season, though, looks to be a golden opportunity to do so, and remind the rest of the league that the Islanders do, in fact, have some top-line firepower despite their reputation.
First though, they need to figure out who will play alongside Horvat and Barzal.
The Islanders haven’t worked in lines often so far during camp, but when they have, Arnaud Durandeau has been on the left of the Horvat-Barzal pair.
Since Durandeau faces an uphill climb to make the roster, that is more instructive as to what skills the Islanders will prioritize in that spot rather than who will ultimately end up there.
“Speed and more speed,” Barzal said of Durandeau’s game. “He’s fast. So yeah. I think he’s got great pace to his game.”
More experimenting with that role will come as the Islanders get later in camp, with the first pair of preseason games coming on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden and Wednesday at UBS Arena.
Lambert has the unenviable job of trying to find the balance between building familiarity with an eventual trio and moving parts around to try and make sure the right group is indeed together.
“The sooner the better, obviously, but you want to be thorough as well. So it’s just a matter of finding the right piece,” Lambert said. “Certainly by game one, we’d like to have something going. But again, things change. And things change over the course of the first month of the season, that’s for sure.”
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