Barry Trotz has been around long enough to know how this looks from the outside, with the 21-year-old Oliver Wahlstrom failing to consistently get ice time requisite with his talent, staying on the third line when a spot seems to be open on the first, and taking consistent public criticism from his coach. 

It’s more than a little eyebrow-raising at times, and after Saturday’s win over the Blues, in which Wahlstrom scored for the first time since Feb. 1 in just 8:52 of ice time — to be fair, mostly a product of a game that featured just 45:39 of five-on-five play — Trotz unpacked it. The coach devoted five straight minutes of his postgame press conference to detailing Wahlstrom’s process, where he’s at and where he’s going. 

“He’s gonna be good,” Trotz said. “He’s gonna be fine. You guys are like McDonald’s. You guys want everything right now.” 

Trotz, an NHL coach for 23 seasons, knows it can be better to wait. 

“It’s a process with Wally and it’s a process with [23-year-old Kieffer] Bellows where it’s easy, everybody analytically and everybody who says, ‘Oh just put the kid in, he’ll be fine.’ It doesn’t work that way,” Trotz said. “You get confidence by earning it a little bit. If it comes easy for you and you run into a dry spell or a hard spell, you don’t know where to go. But if you make it a little bit hard and understand that everything is critical, then you understand that you start building your game and the momentum and all that comes. 

“And you saw that with [Noah] Dobson and it applies to forwards, is that he’s gonna take a couple steps forward then he’s gonna take a couple steps back. And I’ll be honest with you, with the young guys, you try to give them areas where you can have success. So a lot of times, Wally will be out against third pairs, Wally will be out against third and fourth lines.” 

Trotz wants to use matchups to protect Wahlstrom, he said, to give him room to grow. Too often he’s seen young players thrown onto the first line and struggle against stars. He wants to build “growth plates” and give his young players a place to go that’s upwards. 

Whether that needs to involve public chastisement to the point Trotz has employed it — for example, saying after Wahlstrom scored on Jan. 30, “Obviously he scored the goal, diving in, but that goal was created [by] shots and net traffic, loose pucks,” — is a more open question. Wahlstrom, though, doesn’t seem to have an issue with it. 

“It’s a business and I have to be better in some areas of my game,” Wahlstrom said Saturday when asked about Trotz’s criticism. “I take full pride in that. I’m just gonna keep going and keep working. I love the game and just going to go from there.” 

Wahlstrom’s second full year in the league has featured a lot of moments in which he’s looked like a future top-six player for the Islanders. In mid-January, it looked possible that he would lead the team in scoring this year. 

It’s also featured a series of defensive zone turnovers and game management errors that have drawn Trotz’s ire — a reality of being a young player in the NHL. On Saturday, Trotz gave another example. Against Vancouver, he said, Wahlstrom and Bellows came onto the ice without realizing that the Islanders’ defense pairing had been playing for a minute-and-a-half. Instead of getting the puck out so they could change, they turned it over. 

“And that part of the game, understanding not only that situation because they feel fresh, ‘I’m good, let’s go.’ That’s not how you have to play,” Trotz said. “Sometimes you have to take care of the guys that are hanging on. You gotta take care of the management of the game. Those are those intangibles that young players have to learn.” 

Playing without the puck and playing situationally are the areas analytics struggle to measure, and the areas Trotz stresses to his young players. Just as everyone else, he sees the talent. But he knows that this will be a process. 

“Wally’s a scorer,” Trotz said. “ ‘Give me the puck, I’ll shoot.’ I don’t even know if Wally, since junior, has been a top-tier, first-line winger, because he’s moved up the line pretty quickly. In college, I don’t think he was a first-line guy, I don’t know if he played very much. Really. So he’s got lots of talent. Don’t be impatient with him.” 

Afterwards, as Trotz walked off, he made clear — he can’t explain it any better. 

“That’s the longest answer you’re gonna get from me,” he said. “No more Wally questions.”