{"id":447047,"date":"2026-02-05T13:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/447047\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:44:12","slug":"islanders-need-to-play-more-physical-for-2026-playoff-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/447047\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders need to play more physical for 2026 playoff push"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since the Islanders <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/27\/sports\/islanders-add-stanley-cup-winner-ondrej-palat-in-trade-with-devils\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dealt for Ondrej Palat<\/a> last week, the Czech wing\u2019s performance in the 2022 conference finals against the Rangers has been at the front of my mind.<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers had gone up 2-0 in the series at home, and held a 2-1 lead in Tampa entering the third period of Game 3. They lost that game after Palat scored the winner with 42 seconds left, then lost the next three, with Palat accounting for seven points in total over the final four games.<\/p>\n<p>That series was a great case study in what it takes to win deep in the playoffs, as was Palat\u2019s performance, in particular. The Rangers, by the end, just had nothing left in the tank against a team that was built for attritional, physical playoff hockey (and, by the way, similar reasons were behind the Blueshirts\u2019 loss to Florida in the conference final two years later).<\/p>\n<p>I bring this up now because I am not sure the Islanders, as currently constructed, have those elements that are so crucial to win in the postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the Islanders dealt for Ondrej Palat last week, the Czech wing\u2019s performance in the 2022 conference finals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,3521,2595,374,3328,159,35,5190,5193,4,548,2541,36,43,336],"class_list":["post-447047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-rangers","tag-hockey","tag-inside-the-islanders","tag-mathieu-darche","tag-matthew-schaefer","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkrangers","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-trade-deadline","tag-post-sports-newsletters","tag-rangers","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116018326459300021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}