{"id":1004448,"date":"2026-08-16T13:04:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T13:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1004448\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T13:04:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T13:04:41","slug":"islanders-face-plenty-of-questions-in-quest-to-break-playoff-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1004448\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders face plenty of questions in quest to break playoff drought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Islanders enter the upcoming campaign needing to prove that 2026-27 won\u2019t merely be a bridge season. That mission begins in earnest when they break ground on training camp in just under a month.<\/p>\n<p>At the front office level, just about everything they did this offseason looked like it was focused on keeping the decks clear over the long term, with the Islanders set to have tons of salary cap space available next summer along with a promising group of prospects who will be a year further along in their development.<\/p>\n<p>Players and coach Pete DeBoer, though, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/02\/sports\/islanders-peter-deboer-plan-to-expand-matthew-schaefers-role\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">will want to break a playoff drought<\/a> that threatens to reach three years \u2014 and no doubt will believe they have what it takes to do so.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Best move<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s not a lot to choose from \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/26\/sports\/the-challenge-awaiting-matias-maccelli-to-carve-out-islanders-role\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matias Maccelli<\/a> and Vitek Vanecek were the only NHLers signed, and both were one-year deals \u2014 so we\u2019ll go with something else entirely and say Mathieu Darche\u2019s best move was his forbearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Islanders enter the upcoming campaign needing to prove that 2026-27 won\u2019t merely be a bridge season. That&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1004449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[42],"tags":[28367,12960,1301,293,62,2225,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1004448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-mathieu-darche","tag-matthew-schaefer","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117105332290640114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}