{"id":506044,"date":"2026-03-16T10:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T10:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/506044\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T10:20:13","slug":"islanders-news-headed-north-to-settle-some-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/506044\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders News: Headed north to settle some things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Islanders begin their last road \u201ctrip\u201d of the regular season as they head north of the border for visits to tanking Toronto and still playoff-holding Montreal and playoff-hopeful Ottawa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">After this trip, they\u2019ll finish with 10 of 12 games at home and only single-game trips to make up those two away games in Buffalo and Carolina. They can induce karmic damage to the Leafs, depress the Senators\u2019 playoff hopes, and do likewise to the suddenly-not-safe Canaadiens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As things stand today, the Eastern Conference playoff race is incredibly tight, with the Isles and Penguins in the 2-3 seed of the Metro tied at 81 points, while Boston and Detroit tenuously hold the wild card slots with 80 points, and surging Columbus (79 points) and Ottawa (77 points) not far behind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So, much to play for from the opponents on this trip, except for the Leafs, who are without Auston Matthews and have a pretty good incentive to tank harder so they can keep the top\u2014five protected pick that is otherwise headed to Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Islanders begin their last road \u201ctrip\u201d of the regular season as they head north of the border&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[26255,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-506044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-bits-o-islanders-news","9":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116238354327283302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506044","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=506044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}