On March 8 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the Islanders were about to hold onto a 2-1 divisional victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on a third period goal by Anders Lee. You remember, the one where he famously flipped Kris Letang in front of the net before deflecting Nick Leddy’s shot past Marc-Andre Fleury.
With a little less than five minutes remaining, goaltender Jaroslav Halak made a sliding save, injuring his groin in the process before being helped to the dressing room. Thomas Greiss entered the game in relief and made three saves to nail down the victory before going back to his backup status. But wait….he didn’t. And he might not again.
After the game, head coach Jack Capuano announced Halak would miss six to eight weeks with…show more content… All things considered, Greiss didn’t just pass, or squeak by…he excelled in the role on many…show more content… His cool, calm demeanor and positive attitude along with always saying the right things in an upbeat and relaxed tone. ‘It’s just one game. Onto the next one’, he would say and ‘I’m just here to stay prepared and play the very best I can for my teammates’.
In the first round of the NHL playoffs, a mysterious and cold world to Islanders teams of the past, he would lead them out of the darkness for the first time in 23 years, defeating the Florida Panthers almost single-handedly, four games to two. With the team being outplayed badly for the majority of the six games, Greiss would finish with a 1.81 GAA and .944 save percentage, making the save of the season in game five on an overtime penalty shot by Aleksander Barkov.
It’s tough to saddle him with all the blame in the second round series against the Lightning, when he would slide to numbers of 3.45, .890 against a Tampa team who had a plethora of high quality scoring chances and were just more driven and determined to advance than New York. All things being equal, New York is not even in the second round, losing two coin-flip overtime games in Brooklyn, without Greiss. That isn’t opinion, it’s a statistical based
