The rejoining of Pierre Engvall with Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri on the Islanders’ second line for the first time since last April is not just about throwing a potential life raft to a player whose season has gone completely sideways.
It is also about the looming cap crunch that’s coming for the Islanders once Anthony Duclair and Mathew Barzal get healthy and come off long-term injured reserve.
Whenever that happens — and Barzal, out with an upper-body injury, has yet to start skating, so it appears he’ll go past the original four-to-six week timeline — the Islanders will need to offload approximately $3.3 million from their books.
That task becomes a lot easier if they send down Engvall, whose cap hit goes from $3 million to $1.85 million if he’s in Bridgeport.
In other words, there is a clock on the Swede’s time in the NHL if he can’t stick in the lineup. And he is not going to get a better chance than the one Patrick Roy gave him Thursday against the Kraken, going from a healthy scratch to a top-six chance that represents more the Islanders hoping this sparks Engvall than anything he has earned via his play.
“I was very clear with him this morning,” Roy said. “… And I told him that I want him to be around the net. I want him to drive that net. He played so well against Vancouver and Seattle and Calgary [in mid-November] — that’s the player I’d like to have on my team. I was very clear on what I want.
“I want to give him a fair shot there, and it’s in his hands.”
Engvall’s best hockey as an Islander, by and large, has come with Nelson and Palmieri, with the trio having formed a strong connection after the Isles traded for Engvall in March 2023. The reunion, however, does not come without risks.
Max Tsyplakov moved to the third line to accommodate the move, just the second time this season the Russian has been split from Nelson and Palmieri.
Though that trio did not account for a high-danger chance in the loss to Montreal on Tuesday, per Natural Stat Trick, it’s been the Islanders’ best line this season by some margin, with an eye-popping 60.8 percent expected goals percentage.
“A couple of the last games, we played not so good offense with our line,” Tsyplakov told The Post. “More emotion, more power, new game. We’ll see.”
The prospect of a checking line centered around Tsyplakov and Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who played Thursday with Oliver Wahlstrom, makes some sense on paper, and every chess piece that gets moved around for the Islanders right now comes with the backdrop of creating more lineup options once the team gets healthy.
Still, splitting up what’s been its best offensive line is not an easy prospect for a team whose main challenge has been consistently creating offense.
the Canadiens earlier in the week. Getty Images
It puts even more onus on Engvall, whose consistency has fluctuated like a sine wave throughout his time with the Islanders.
“I think Pierre knows how much of an impact he can make with our team,” Palmieri told The Post. “He’s shown it before. It’s never as smooth sailing as everyone hopes it is. Guys go through things in their career that make them better in the long run and I think what happened with Pierre at the start of the season [getting sent down], this little stretch here, I think it’s really about simplifying his game and believing in himself. We all know the type of impact he can make and the player he is.”
The more apt way to put it might be that everyone knows the player he can be — there are not many 6-foot-5 wingers who can skate the way Engvall does.
As for the player he is? Roy has been anything but convinced, and Engvall is going to need to give the head coach some proof sooner rather than later.
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