Weekend Takeaways: Roy brings much-needed passion, energy to listless Islanders

It’s often said of the NHL and other pro leagues that they’re just more fun when certain teams are in the mix.

Sure, you’ll get violent pushback from direct rivals of these squads, but for the most part leagues seem at their best when the likes of the Dallas Cowboys, L.A. Lakers, New York Yankees and Toronto Maple Leafs matter.

On a micro level, you can sometimes make that same case for individual people.

And Patrick Roy is most definitely one of those people for the NHL.

On Sunday night, Roy guided the New York Islanders to a 3-2 home-ice, overtime win over the Dallas Stars in his first contest behind an NHL bench in nearly eight years.

It’s certainly overstating it to say it feels like there’s been a void ever since he left the Colorado Avalanche in 2016, but there’s no doubt having Roy’s outsized personality — even if, at 58 and having to wait so long to get back to the big league, he’s a humbler version of himself — is fantastic for hockey.

There were no antics in his first game as Islanders coach like there were way back in 2013, when Roy — after a successful 6-1 debut as an NHL bench boss — rocked the glass that separated the benches of the Avalanche and Anaheim Ducks while screaming bloody murder at Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau.

Seriously, we’d be worried if something on that level happened again.

But Roy did raise a fist and share hearty handshakes with staff on the bench after Bo Horvat buried the winner 41 seconds into the fourth period.

Even a slightly subdued Roy brings as much passion and energy in one blocker hand as many have in their entire body. And, lord knows, the listless Islanders need it, having gone 5-8-4 in former coach Lane Lambert’s final 17 games.

Now we’ll see if St. Patrick can get the Isles in gear and push the team back into an Eastern Conference playoff spot.

Ask any Montreal Canadiens fan and they’ll say, in some ways, the franchise has never been the same since Roy left town nearly 30 years ago. In a sense, you could say the same of the NHL as a whole in the past nearly 10 Roy-less years.

Thankfully — on behalf of more than just Long Islanders — that’s now changed.

• It wasn’t a great weekend for Philly, giving up a combined 12 goals in back-to-back home losses to Colorado and Ottawa. That said — and this is true about so much of the Flyers’ season — it’s hard not to focus on the positive here when you look at the contribution of Cam Atkinson.

The right winger potted a goal and an assist on Saturday versus Colorado, then added a helper on Sunday against Ottawa for a three-point weekend. That brings the 34-year-old right winger up to four goals and eight points during his past five outings. Atkinson, of course, missed all of last season with a neck injury that ultimately required surgery. He and teammate Sean Couturier — who missed nearly two full seasons of hockey prior to this one — may have to split the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy right down the middle.

• Nathan MacKinnon went 2-2-4 four in that win over Philly and woke up Monday morning as the NHL’s scoring leader with 77 points, one ahead of the guy who’s largely been setting the pace, Nikita Kucherov. It officially feels like No. 29 is rocketing toward his first-ever Hart Trophy.

• I’m not sure when/if panic would set in with the defending Cup champs, but Vegas has to be feeling the best its felt in a while having downed Pittsburgh 3-2 in the desert on Saturday for its third consecutive win. The Knights have allowed just four goals total in that mini-run as Logan Thompson has earned all three W’s and posted a .956 save percentage in those games.

Let’s see if this carries over to a four-game roadie which takes them through the three NYC-area teams and Detroit.   

• There were two awesome moments in California on Saturday. Jonathan Quick — a two-time Cup champion with the Kings — returned to Los Angeles as a member of the New York Rangers and narrowly lost a 2-1 battle with his old squad. In other words, exactly the type of game Quick helped the Kings win so often during his 15 years in L.A.

That same night in North California, Logan Couture played his first game of the season with the Sharks after missing everything up to this point with what the he said was a hip/groin issue sustained during off-season training. The team captain picked up an assist with a freakin’ sweet backhand sauce dish to another long-term Shark, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, as San Jose downed the Ducks 5-3. Welcome back, Logan.

It’s been a miserable year in Minnesota and Kirill Kaprizov’s less-than-superstar showing has been a part of that. The Russian, though, caught fire on the weekend, netting two goals in his team’s 6-4 win in Florida on Friday and going off for the hatty 48 hours later in another victory in Carolina. If the Wild have any shot at pulling back into the playoff chase, Kaprizov will need to be a huge part of it.

1. Winnipeg Jets (30-10-4) Mason Appleton scored in Saturday’s 2-1 overtime victory in Ottawa, meaning after going 25 games without burying, he’s not got two tallies in his past two outings.

2. Vancouver Canucks (31-11-4) After his two-goal, three-point night on Saturday versus the Leafs, Conor Garland is up to eight points — including five goals — in his past nine contests.

3. Edmonton Oilers (26-15-1) Can we get this streak to sweet 16, one shy of the NHL-record 17 Mario Lemieux’s Penguins put up more than 30 years ago? The Oilers’ next three games are home tilts versus lowly Columbus and Chicago before respectable Nashville comes to town.

4. Toronto Maple Leafs (23-14-9) It’ll be a happy flight home for Ilya Samsonov, who got his first win in well over a month in Seattle Sunday night.

5. Calgary Flames (21-20-5) A few things are not going as hoped this year in Calgary, but the fact — after Saturday’s 3-1 loss — the Flames haven’t defeated the Oilers in 14 months now has to sting as much as anything.

6. Montreal Canadiens (19-20-7) Rebuilds have ups and downs, but the third-period crumble Montreal had in Boston Saturday — a 5-4 game becoming a 9-4 game in the first half of the final stanza — was a painful reminder of how far away this team can feel like it is at times.

7. Ottawa Senators (17-24-1) Sunday’s much-needed 5-3 victory in Philadelphia was Ottawa’s first win over a playoff squad since they beat the Leafs on Dec. 27.

The Week Ahead

• It’s best-on-best Monday night. The Winnipeg Jets, the cream of the Western Conference crop, visit the East’s top club in Boston for a monster tilt with the B’s.

• 2024 NHL Draft talk is only going to crank up for the next six months. On Wednesday, the best draft-eligible major junior players will gather in Moncton, N.B. for the annual CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game.

• The Patrick Roy buzz will boil over on Thursday night when the Islanders visit the team Roy led to a pair of championships, the Montreal Canadiens.

• Speaking of Habs goalie heroes, a long time ago, Lars Eller was traded for one when the Canadiens acquired a then-young Dane from the St. Louis Blues for Jaroslav Halak following a stupefying performance by the latter in the 2010 post-season. Eller is set to play his 1,000^th NHL game on Saturday in Pittsburgh when, who else, the Canadiens come to town.