Mat Barzal didn’t make it a secret how miserable it was for him to watch the Islanders slip out of the playoff race, unable to do anything about it.
The 27-year-old from Coquitlam, British Columbia, had already missed time early in the season, working his way back from an upper-body injury, only for his left kneecap to break just six weeks later when Barzal blocked a shot.
He missed the season’s final 10 weeks after undergoing surgery, and without him the Islanders suffered a disastrous finish, dropping 11 of their final 14 games and getting eliminated from the race in Game 78 of 82.
“You miss so many moments,” Barzal said at breakup day after the season ended. “Boys come back from the road, talking about the road trip at the lunch table. Watching the games, having a big road win. There’s nothing better than going on the road and winning a big game. Just not being able to be a part of that stuff, it killed me.
“I’m not sugarcoating it. It was horrible mentally.”
The what-if of Barzal’s health could, in time, turn into one of the greater what-ifs in franchise history for the Islanders.
At the time he got hurt, the Islanders were playing their best hockey of the season. Including the win in Tampa on the night Barzal got hurt defending a lead late in regulation — the Islanders allowed the game-tying goal but won in overtime — the club had won seven in a row, with Barzal notching six points during that span.
His was far from the only injury, with the Islanders suffering a trio of hits to their blue line around the same time, but it seemed to be the breaking point.
The Isles lost five of their next six on either side of the 4 Nations break, and aside from increasingly rare fits and starts, couldn’t get their offense going for the rest of the season.
If Barzal had stayed healthy, would the Islanders have been in better position at the trade deadline and hung onto Brock Nelson? Would they have snuck into the playoffs and perhaps kept Lou Lamoriello as general manager another season?
Unlikely, but unanswerable. In any case, whatever the new regime looks like, one of the biggest questions heading into next season will be whether Barzal can return to full strength from the jump.
If it lingers, a knee issue has potential ramifications for a player whose game is as predicated on skating as Barzal’s.
And no matter what the roster looks like, the Islanders will be depending on him to get back to the level he was at in 2023-24, when he put up 80 points for the first time since his rookie season skating alongside Bo Horvat for much of the year.
Even more than that, with the Islanders expected to market their individual players more heavily with Lamoriello out of the picture, Barzal is an obvious candidate to become — explicitly — the face of the franchise.
That will only increase the pressure to perform.
He said this offseason will be anything but normal for him, and there will be no breaks in his rehab or vacations to Europe. The goal is to not miss a beat.
“If not [the same workout regimen], even harder than what I’ve done in the past,” Barzal said. “Really wanting to persevere through this. I love the game, I love being around my teammates. This is kind of everything to me.
“To not be able to play as many games as I missed sucked mentally and physically. My drive to get back to the player I was coming into camp last year is at an all-time high.”
