3 hours ago
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When I was talking to Scott Mayfield last week in Las Vegas for a piece on what’s been a quietly resurgent season for No. 24, he said something that did not make it into the story but which caught my ear.
“I think for us, we have a goal in here, and that’s to make playoffs and to win a Stanley Cup,” he said.
That sounds like standard fare — of course their goal is to win a Stanley Cup, right? Except, off the top of my head, I could not remember the last time I heard an Islander reference winning the Cup as their goal this season.
During my first season on the beat, 2021-22, I regularly wrote some form of “the ultimate goal is to win a Stanley Cup,” even as the season slid away, because players and coaches regularly referenced it. The Islanders were coming off a second straight trip to the conference finals, and even though they failed to make the playoffs that season, it was seen internally as an anomaly. Surely they would be back sooner rather than later.
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