Considering that everything in hockey seems subject to further review, it is fair to take a second look at the Islanders’ postmortem. And it looks like this: Despite having been outplayed late in every game against the Lightning and having played their worst in their last game, the 2015-16 Islanders should be remembered as good finishers. They stopped a slide of 23 years without a playoff series victory and they ended the tension that had been building all that time.
As finishes go, they could have done much worse.
True, they must make changes, possibly big changes, because of how they failed to close out the Lightning when they had chances at home and of how soundly they were beaten in Game 5 Sunday.