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SALT LAKE CITY — Lou Lamoriello had just admitted Thursday morning that his team still was searching for an identity when reporters walked into the Islanders dressing room and spotted a toy rubber chicken in Anders Lee’s stall.
The captain had found it, unclaimed, inside T-Mobile Arena.
“It’s coming with us,” he said.
After the Islanders blew out the Golden Knights, 4-0, a few hours later, the chicken was 1-0 — and was ceremonially given to Brock Nelson following the game.
Maybe if the Islanders can keep a fledgling two-game win streak going Saturday in their first trip to Utah, the chicken will become part of the identity for which they’re searching. Or, at least, a pretty good mascot.
As far as on-ice identity goes, what the Islanders showed Thursday could be a pretty good starting point, chicken or no chicken.
“We’re a team that goes out and plays a simple, hard hockey game,” Lee said before the game, articulating something the Islanders turned into a brand in past years but have rarely gotten to over the first half of the season. “That’s who we are. That’s who we’ve been for a long time. We’re not gonna be flashy. We’ll have moments with some guys, but we’re not a flashy team. We’re not gonna put five or six in the net. We’re a structured team that works hard every night and has the ability to win tight games. And that’s been our identity for a long time.”
For a long time, yes. For this season, rarely — though you could see it peaking through Thursday.
In Lamoriello’s mind, that’s the result of injuries and the breakup of the Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck fourth line, through which the Islanders channeled so much of that identity in the past.
“I think we’ve been searching a little bit for that,” Lamoriello said. “We haven’t had the team together to really see what it is right now. I think the identity was always focused in on our fourth line, with reference to the way that fourth line played. I think we’re a combination of that and a little more skilled. Our identity will be when you play consistently on a nightly basis and have success. We have searched a little bit for it.”
Ask the players and it doesn’t sound like a question of not knowing what sort of team they want to be. Given how similar the makeup of this roster is to past seasons, that’s not much of a surprise. Rather, it’s a question of whether they still can be that team on a nightly basis.
“Probably at this point, you look back and say it hasn’t happened enough,” Nelson said. “I don’t know if it’s hard [to establish], but the game is different every night. Different things happen. … At the end of the day, you gotta go out there and win games, so it hasn’t happened enough. It’s not something that we can’t do.”
If Thursday proved anything, it’s that there’s still plenty of belief in the dressing room.
And as pitiful as the Islanders have been at times through a 16-18-7 first half of the season, there still is time to turn the ship around.
One organizational talking point heading into the game was that despite the results not quite being there, the Islanders felt an uptick in their play since Christmas.
Coach Patrick Roy said afterward that the win felt like a culmination of that.
“All you want as a coach is to see some consistency, and it’s exactly what we have tonight,” Roy said. “This was a great team effort. Everybody played really well. I thought our ‘D’ were moving the puck fast, were jumping on the rush, made great decisions.”
Holding Vegas scoreless in its own building looked a whole lot like the Islanders of old. Maybe there’s some magic in the chicken.
“We talked about it this morning — we know who we are and how we have success,” Lee said postgame. “I thought we went out and executed that great tonight.”
