On the opening day of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, I find myself torn between two halves of my own Islanders fandom, a feeling that started to arise as it became clear the Islanders weren’t going to miss the playoffs, even if they weren’t yet close to mathematically clinching.
One half remains content with the fact that they actually got to this point. This half remembers well what the team projected to be on July 1, and again in September, as the roster began to take shape. It remembers well the prediction I posted to this very site on September 20, that this team wasn’t going to make the playoffs, or even come all that close to them.