Capellini: Islanders' Chances In Game 7 Come Down To 2 Words — Jaroslav Halak

By Jeff Capellini
WFAN.com

He had a good, but not great, regular season. So far he's been very good in the playoffs.

Now the Islanders need Jaroslav Halak to be exceptional.

And history suggests he should be.

The veteran goaltender will take the ice in Game 7 against the Capitals in Washington faced with perhaps the biggest task of his professional life. Yes, Halak is no stranger to the high-stakes pressure of the postseason. He once took the Montreal Canadiens as a No. 8 seed to the Eastern Conference finals.

But considering all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the final season at Nassau Coliseum, what he does for the Islanders on Monday night may not only guarantee two more games at the fabled "old barn," it will add his name to Islander lore, where there are but a few goaltenders.

Halak, who has upped his save percentage from a decent .914 during the regular season to a much more acceptable .926 in this series, was amazing on Saturday in Game 6, making 38 saves in the Islanders' 3-1 victory. With his team forced to play two rookie defensemen with barely any NHL experience -- let alone playoff experience -- due to injuries, Halak stood tall under fire, making one big save after another as the Isles found a way to live to play another day.

"They came in, they stepped in and played well," Halak said of young defensemen Matt Donovan and Scott Mayfield, who played in place of the injured Lubomir Visnovsky and Calvin de Haan and are expected to do so again Monday night. "We will need the same thing from them in Game 7, so it's going to be a battle. It's not going to be easy, for sure, and we'll see what happens at the end of the night."

The Islanders' defense over the years, at least when the team has been good, has been defined by "money" goaltending. Billy Smith played in an era of more wide-open offense and excelled, despite using equipment that was nowhere near as advantageous as what technology has provided today.

Smith was money because he made the big saves when they mattered most. And though his Isles were loaded offensively, along their blue line and in every intangible department imaginable during their four-Stanley Cup dynasty, you can make the argument that they may not have won a single championship if not for Smith.

Fast forward a decade or so to the 1992-93 season. Glenn Healy was flat-out superb as the eighth-seeded Islanders knocked off the Capitals and two-time defending Cup-champion Penguins before finally succumbing in the conference finals to the eventual champion Canadiens.

Then there was Chris Osgood, who didn't win a series during the Isles' 2001-02 renaissance season, but did more during the regular season and in the seven-game first-round loss to Toronto than any goalie the Isles had started since Healy.

Now it's Halak's turn, and judging by his past play with his team's back against the wall, the Islanders should be in good shape Monday night.

"You don't want to put extra pressure on yourself, because you will be squeezing the stick tight and it will not go your way. So you just have to go out there, try to do your job and have fun at the same time," Halak said.

Including Saturday's effort, Halak is now 6-1 with a 1.72 goals-against average and .956 save percentage when his team is facing elimination, including a 2-0 mark with a 1.50 GAA and .963 save percentage in Game 7s. But if you break those numbers down further you'll find even more reason to think the Islanders should have a very good shot, even on the road.

Halak is 4-0 against the Capitals alone, stopping 169 of 173 shots for an other-worldly .977 save percentage.

"It's big and usually, obviously, you don't like to put the pressure on one guy because it's a team game, you want to have all 20 guys going. But the guy in net usually has a lot to do with your wins and losses throughout the year," Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. "And just because it's Game 7 you don't want to change that or change the mentality playing the game they love to play."

"(Halak) will be good, we know that. He's a calm, collected guy and plays with a quiet intensity and we feed off that. He's always good when we need him to be, so he'll be like that again tonight," defenseman Thomas Hickey added.

The Islanders will need Halak to be all he can be Monday night, because the Capitals are almost certainly going to come out and try to end it early. Washington has been utterly dominant on home ice since the second Kyle Okposo gave the Isles a 3-1 lead with 5:51 left in the second period of Game 2, outscoring New York 8-1 since.

There's really no way around it -- the Verizon Center will be a zoo. It will be its own version of what the Coliseum was on Saturday. However, the difference between the buildings is it's a lot easier to take a Caps crowd out of a game than it is an Islander crowd, as evidenced by Game 1 and the first half of Game 2.

Halak can help do this by being strong early. If the Isles can get out to a lead, who's to say the Caps won't start playing tight? After all, history suggests they don't play well under extremely stressful conditions as evidenced by their 3-9 all-time record in Game 7s, which includes a troubling 2-7 mark on home ice.

General manager Garth Snow traded for Halak's rights last summer specifically for moments like this. Always known as a goalie who plays better the more pucks he sees, Halak's minutes were monitored closely during the regular season. He was rested just enough to make sure that his stamina and conditioning would be at peak levels for the playoffs.

And so far, physically, he's been up to the task.

The question now is whether he has what it takes, that extra "it" quality needed to put the Islanders on his back and make sure they will be playing in Madison Square Garden later this week.

It's time to put things on Halak-down. What say you, Jaro?

Read more columns by Jeff Capellini and follow him on Twitter at @GreenLanternJet