Islanders Playoff Gameday News: Win tonight or else

Photo by Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images Sewing the tracking chip into the jersey because we plan to be here a while.Until this year, NHL playoffs had not featured any best-of-five series since I was a child who understood that The Natural Way Of Things was for the Islanders to be annual Stanley Cup contenders.

So it was strange this year, with the Panthers qualifying round, to be up 2-0 and think, “Wait...series is basically over?!” Except maybe not, because three is less daunting than four.

I am completely used to the mindset of the best-of-seven. And that mindset is: 0-2 is bad but not insurmountable, 0-3 requires a miracle.

Even with a few contrary examples in the last decade, where a…