Owners of two straight losses to horrid teams, John Tavares and the New York Islanders find themselves in desperate straits.

After a pair of demoralizing losses to two of the league’s worst teams, the New York Islanders find themselves in a major funk, yet again. With playoff hopes all but gone, fans want answers as to what went wrong this year.

New Year, Same Problems

After coming off of a 6-2 win over a sneaky Winnipeg Jets team, the Islanders scored two goals in the past two games losing to the worst team in the NHL in overtime, and the second worst team in a shootout.

Garth Snow has made it abundantly clear that until (possibly) the deadline, this would be the team for this year.

Well, in the words of Mike Francesca, “They stink!”

Inconsistency has been the bane of the Islanders existence for years and it has possibly never been more prevalent than it has been this season. One moment the Islanders are scoring more than four goals a game for four consecutive games, and the next they dropped two consecutive games against the two worst teams in the NHL.

Most painfully so, is that these issues are mostly self-inflicted and can likely be resolved with one simple and effective offseason.

But what is it that really killed this team this season?

It really boils down to three key factors for the Islanders:

1) Goaltending

In reality, this is not that big of an issue for the Islanders long term, but it was a major issue during the beginning stretch of the season, enough to have put a severe damper on their record and overall standing.

When the season began for New York, their three netminders were likely hesitant going in. Starter Jaroslav Halak was the most vocal, publicly saying at the conclusion of 2015-16 that Garth Snow would “have some decisions to make.”

Despite reaching a solution for 2017, it came at a point that was much too late. Halak was assigned to the SoundTigers of the AHL but not before posting a horrendous 6-8-5 record accompanied by a 3.23 GAA and a .904 save percentage.

At this time last in 2014-15, Halak had won 20 games and had been named an NHL All-Star.

How times have changed.

Fortunately for the Islanders, backup Thomas Greiss more than proved a capable starter and is repeating the career numbers he set last season. He is 9-5-2 with a 2.31 GAA and a .927 save percentage, and it’s likely he will be the team’s main target to resign in the offseason.

2) Relying heavily on rookies

There’s no dodging this one.

Everyone has seen the steady decrease of production in Ryan Strome. Since the 2014-15 season, Strome has been struggling heavily, even going as far as being sent down to the AHL last season.

The Islanders put a lot of stock in their young players, and so far Brock Nelson has been the most consistent product (career high 42 points in 2014-15).

Anders Lee has been rebounding significantly, but still was a hamper on the team’s offense for enough time to remove them from contention.

Younger forwards like Alan Quine and Shane Prince will make contributions to the lineup in the future, but, still, have a couple of years before they hit their real potential.

3) A loss of team identity

The hit that was most notable immediately was also the one that hurt the most.

From the beginning of the season, the Islanders not only played poorly, but just did not seem to gel or flow as well as they did. It’s not something that can quite be explained, but it was something that was felt by Islanders fans unanimously.

The team felt off.

There was no familiar energy line, a lot of key players left and new faces joined the team very rapidly. The Islanders lost a piece of who they were and failed to properly fill those gaps. In losing fan-favorite Matt Martin, the Islanders lost a huge piece of their identity and of who they were not just on the ice, but off the ice.

The losses of Frans Nielsen and Kyle Okposo hurt the Islanders on the scoreboard taking 135 points out of their lineup. The experience left behind by the veterans was certainly replaced with Jason Chimera and Andrew Ladd, but not enough to make a significant contribution offensively.

Despite them playing better of late, Chimera and Ladd have failed to step up in the absence of forwards Nielsen and Okposo.

In essence, these were the contributing factors to the team that was iced this season. Despite these problems being realistically fixable in one offseason, the extra year that was burned away from John Tavares‘ contract at a laughable $5.5 million salary cannot be restored.

If owners Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin do not come in to help repair relations soon, there’s a chance he could walk in free agency in two years.

That is an issue which can unravel this team in itself.