After missing on Gaudreau, where do Islanders go next?

The 2021-22 season did not go anywhere near as planned for the New York Islanders.

After back-to-back trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, the Islanders entered the season with sky-high expectations, and reasonably so. They had a top head coach, two outstanding goalies, and a team that had shown it could win in the playoffs.

But everything that could have possibly gone wrong during the season did go wrong.

They started the season with a 13-game road trip while their new arena was completed. That road trip coincided with COVID and injury issues that absolutely decimated their roster. The end result was an 11-game losing streak that was part of a 5-10-5 start to the regular season. It put them in a hole that was pretty much impossible to climb out of in a top-heavy Eastern Conference.

Once their roster returned to normal and they actually had a chance to play some games at home, they finished the year with a much stronger record and at least a little bit closer to what should have been expected. But it still wasn’t quite good enough to get them closer than 16 points to a playoff spot. And even when looking at their final 62 games, where they went 32-27-5, that would still only be a 92-point pace over an 82-game season. That is still not at a playoff level.

That resulted in a pretty stunning head coach change that saw Barry Trotz get fired and replaced by Lane Lambert.

But the roster, for the most part, remains the same as we get go through the first week of free agency. The only major chance to this point has been trading the No. 13 overall pick in a three-team trade with Montreal and Chicago that saw the Islanders acquire Alexander Romanov. He is young and has potential and has shown flashes of ability in the NHL, but