MONTREAL — Remember when 30 goals in a season felt like a big milestone for Brock Nelson?
Surely he would have hit the number in 2020 had the league not shut down, and surely he would have had a chance the next year had it played 82 games.
But as he plows toward a third straight year apace to break the 30-goal mark, it is worth asking why this has begun to feel so normal.
“I think I would’ve liked to have done it sooner,” Nelson told The Post Friday. “I think I was headed for that the shutdown year. Was hoping that was gonna be the first time, obviously got pushed back a little bit.
“I did hit 30, it felt nice. You get a little taste of that and a good opportunity for me to succeed here, just continue to stay aggressive and attack, always think about wanting more. You want to go out there and produce and replicate that over and over again and continue to strive for more.”
As stars go, Nelson is not the loudest personality in the room.
He is in that way a good fit for an Islanders team that tends to eschew attention, unless it is Paul Bissonnette taking a shot at them.
But after Chris Kreider got widespread recognition for hitting 500 points this week, it is worth noting that Nelson is creeping near the same milestone, with 487 headed into Saturday’s game against the Canadiens.
He’s also likely to finish his career as the highest-scoring non-Dynasty Islander, with 33 to go until he catches Pat LaFontaine for that title.
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“He’s lethal,” Mat Barzal told The Post. “I feel like it’s one of those things where the first year he scored 30, everyone’s like, wow. But now the next year, it just starts to get a little bit more normalized.
“The thing about him and the guys that score that many goals is you need to be either really good at one thing or you need to be able to score a bunch of different ways. You look at his goals this year, there’s tips, there’s one-timers, there’s wrist shots, there’s backdoor off-side one-timers. There’s so many ways he can score. That’s what makes him such a good goalscorer, he can do so many things.”
Barzal has had a front-row seat as Nelson has gotten better and better with age, finally turning into a true force over the past three seasons.
At 32, Nelson is scoring now at a higher clip than he did throughout his 20s.
That does not happen by happy accident.
“He’s working on his game at all times. I’d say that’s the biggest thing,” Barzal said. “He’s not one of those guys that turns 30 and kind of just hangs out and lets his game settle. He’s out there every day, takes care of his body. So those things play a big factor.”
The Islanders have also finally found the lineup configuration that can best unlock Nelson, Barzal and Bo Horvat alike.
“If he’s going and my line’s going,” Barzal said, “we’re a nightmare matchup for teams.”
Indeed, it is suddenly a bit of a problem when you need to pick between using your top pair to defend Barzal, Horvat and Anders Lee or Nelson, Kyle Palmieri and Pierre Engvall.
“I think that’s part of the roll-them-over mentality of getting in a rhythm and getting everybody going,” Nelson said. “When both those lines are going, all those lines are going, I think you can produce pretty high, create quality chances no matter who’s going out there. Doesn’t really matter the matchup.”
