CHICAGO — The Islanders ended 2025 with an advertisement for what they hope will come in 2026.
They took their third win in four games, 3-2 over the Blackhawks on Tuesday night at the United Center on Bo Horvat’s shootout winner in the final game of a calendar year whose second half could not have looked more different from its first.
The Islanders went from a franchise that appeared to be spinning its wheels, missing the playoffs and missing a discernible plan for the future, to having one of the NHL’s most exciting young cores along with a team that is sitting in second place in the Metropolitan Division as it ends 2025.
Tuesday’s fast-paced effort that featured a goal from Cal Ritchie, an assist from Matthew Schaefer and a game the Islanders controlled against an inferior Blackhawks side epitomized so much of what’s changed.
And, in fitting with one piece they’d probably like to change next year, the Islanders didn’t make it easy on themselves.
Their 2-0 lead went kaput in the last five minutes of the second period when consistent pressure from the Blackhawks finally paid off. Oliver Moore fed Teuvo Teravainen for a right-circle one-timer at 15:31 of the period then after Horvat took a four-minute high-sticking double minor, Nick Lardis made the Islanders pay with just 1.7 seconds to go in the second.
Lardis’ goal was from almost the same spot as Teravainen’s, and with Moore getting the assist again.
That tied a game the Islanders had easily controlled early on, forcing them to spend the final 20 minutes working for their last points of 2025.
The game, which had started out wide open, settled into a scrappy affair over the last 20 minutes, with Mathew Barzal again in the center of things, getting twin roughing penalties with Ilya Mikheyev after the pair were in the middle of a scrum that started when Colton Dach pushed over Emil Heineman.
Chicago was just a few posts away from holding a commanding lead, with defenseman Artyom Levshunov drawing iron twice by himself, the second of those coming in the third.
The Islanders were lucky to have even come away with a point after Nick Foligno drew iron on an attempt from inside the blue paint with seconds to go and an open net in regulation.
They failed to score on an overtime power play after Levshunov tripped Heineman, but David Rittich made sure they didn’t pay the price by outdueling Spencer Knight in the shootout.
Though the Islanders played with plenty of pace and generated off the rush, the line blender Patrick Roy went to by putting Barzal on Horvat’s wing and breaking up a fourth line that had been intact for a month had — at best — mixed results.
Their defensive structure was lacking, as they gave Chicago far too much space, and there wasn’t quite enough on the forecheck or off the cycle. A fourth line of Anthony Duclair, Casey Cizikas and Marc Gatcomb appeared to be missing Kyle MacLean, who sat as a healthy scratch.
They won this game in the very same building where, two seasons ago, a pitiful effort was the final straw for then-coach Lane Lambert, a low point of the era that ended when the lottery balls dropped their way and Mathieu Darche was hired as general manager over the span of a few weeks in May.
Perfect it was not, but oh how things have changed for this organization in such a short time.
