Patrick Roy broke out the same phrase he’s used all season on Saturday morning in explaining why, yet again, he switched around the Islanders’ line combinations.
“We’re gonna try different things,” he said.
The different things, in that case, amounted to four forward line combinations, in the most important game of the Islanders’ season, none of which had started a game together all year. The Islanders went on to self-combust in the third period, lose 7-3 and all four of those lines struggled to click.
There is a time and a place for trying things and experimenting with lineups. For most of the season, it makes sense to do that, and injuries make it somewhat of a necessity.
