As the 2025-26 NHL regular season and the Eastern Conference playoff push winds down, there are teams that have seized the moment and strung wins together like the Penguins, Flyers and Senators, and there are teams that have spiraled out of previously promising positions to leave an empty feeling like the Red Wings and Islanders.<\/p>\n
The Red Wings were officially eliminated last night, coughing up multiple leads against the Devils in front of a quiet home crowd that turned into a minutes-long chorus of boos as Detroit officially reached a decade without a playoff appearance. Will the Islanders earn such a reaction? It probably depends on their effort over the next two games, but they\u2019ve done themselves no favors.<\/p>\n
Columbus (92 pts.) is still in the picture, interrupting their tailspin with a win over the Canadiens last night. The Flyers (94 pts.) put pressure on everyone by convincingly destroying the Jets in Winnipeg. The Islanders (91 pts.) and Capitals (91 pts.) still have outside chances, but only if everything goes right for them and everything wrong for Philadelphia and Columbus.<\/p>\n
The Isles\u2019 foe tonight is the Canadiens, who were beaten by the Blue Jackets at home last night but still have a chance to secure home ice advantage or even a division-winning seed.<\/p>\n
Before a bell similarly tolls for the Islanders, here\u2019s some Red Wings Collapse Porn:<\/p>\n
With a better showing over the final two games, the Islanders can avoid some of those condemnations \u2014 and they\u2019re in year 1 of a new regime, with a new coach, so it\u2019s not the same as what\u2019s happening in Detroit. But still, the position they were in, the additions that were made to theoretically reinforce the effort, it\u2019s all going to bring up some core questions if\/when they fall short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the 2025-26 NHL regular season and the Eastern Conference playoff push winds down, there are teams that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[26255,5,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-551269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-bits-o-islanders-news","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-islanders","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-islanders","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkislanders","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116392879933469283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551269","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=551269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}