It’s a small number, just 12.8 percent, but it’s a number that Barry Trotz has already helped increase and hopes to do so again.
The Islanders coach knows exactly how difficult it is for a team to come back from a 2-0 hole in a best-of-seven series, just 52 teams out of 405 in that position have done so in the history of the NHL. But Trotz was behind the bench for one of those 52, just over a year ago when his Capitals lost the first two games of the first round to the Blue Jackets but ended up coming back to win the series — and then the Stanley Cup.
He now faces it again, as his Islanders lost the first two games of the second round at home to the Hurricanes, two very tight games at Barclays Center that came as a shock to the system following a first-round sweep of the Penguins and a subsequent 10-day layoff. So Game 3 in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday night is not a must-win, but it’s not far off.
“You sometimes have to understand that there’s a little bit of a process that you end up going through,” Trotz said Monday on Long Island during his team’s day of rest. “We’re going through some adversity. I don’t think we went through any in that first series. We don’t want to look back. And there’s always tests.
“I said there’s an unseen hand or something will come up that will test you a little bit. It’s how you respond. I said to them, ‘Hey, we’re going to Carolina to win two games. Plain and simple.’ And you can’t win two unless you focus on the first, so we’ll focus on the first and go from there.”
The direness of the situation is that only four teams out of 212 (1.9 percent) have ever come back from being down 3-0, one of them the 1975 Islanders. That is not the situation these Islanders want to be in, especially not in Carolina where the fans can smell blood in the water and are full-throated behind their “bunch of jerks.”
“We know we’ve dug ourselves a little hole and there’s some urgency to get back in the series,” Trotz said. “You fall down 3-0, it’s going to have to be a real epic-type thing because you don’t want to dig yourself too far. But it’s a race to four, and they’re up two.”
There is almost no question the long layoff hurt the Islanders most in terms of mental focus. While the Hurricanes were grinding out a first-round series that needed double overtime in Game 7 against the Capitals, the Isles were just trying to replicate game-like situations in practice while mixing in days of rest.
They knew it might take a while before they got back into full-bore playoff mode, and the hope is the positive side of the layoff will come later in the series, when Carolina is worn down and the Islanders are relatively fresh.
One thing that is certain is they need to score more than just the one goal they had through the first two games — that one coming on a Mat Barzal pass that was deflected in by Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin. They peppered the posts with pucks in Game 2, and could never take advantage of backup goalie Curtis McElhinney coming in for the injured Petr Mrazek early in the second period.
The two teams are very similar in playing a defensive style, and the only times the Islanders have really struggled in their first year under Trotz is when they get away from that patient, plodding game. The hope for them is the situation won’t force any uncharacteristic risks and their dedication to that style will eventually pay off with a return of crispness.
Just like it did for Trotz a year ago.
“You’ve just got to respond and you’ve got to dig in. We have another level.” Trotz said. “There’s some players on our team that have another level of focus, another level of commitment — all those things that’s necessary to win. You can’t have any passengers. We’re going to have to go in there fully committed, and if we do that, it gives ourselves a chance to have success.”