It would have been easy for Noah Dobson to look at his point total last season and say everything was all fine, no need for any changes.
Instead, the 23-year-old did something that many older and more experienced players struggle with. He looked in the mirror and told himself the truth.
“I think when I looked back at the year, I felt just a little inconsistent at times,” Dobson told The Post before Wednesday’s game against the Flyers. “I was still able to produce offensively efficient numbers, but I think there’s times where I would get loose and throughout the year, there wasn’t that consistency. So that’s something I wanted bad in my game on both ends of the rink, being consistent.”
The changes Dobson made over the summer were subtle but vital. He took advantage of the combination of full health and a full offseason to focus on adding muscle.
He hired a chef for the first time, diving into nutrition. He got to training camp feeling confident.
“Here, we have the luxury of eating at the rink. The summer’s different,” Dobson said. “I think just time-consuming wise, where right after training, those next 30 minutes are important where you’re burning so much, you gotta get calories in. Just trying to be really keen on that stuff this summer and I think it takes a little bit of discipline, but it’s really helpful for me.”
Dobson described himself as having always been a clean eater, but with a high metabolism.
According to official measurements, he gained six pounds between last season and this one, going from 194 to 200.
That didn’t require a wholesale change to his diet, he said, but just adding or subtracting certain things to be more precise.
Dobson also tracked what he was eating, making sure it was the right food at the right time.
“It’s kinda the first real full offseason I’ve had where you have no limitation, you could do everything, get stronger, get better,” Dobson said. “Coming out of junior, you play so much hockey in the summer with all the camps, I haven’t really had that much time. And then obviously with the bubble and all that stuff. So I think it was just making the most of the time. I think that’s really been beneficial for me.”
Just under a quarter of the way into the season, the results are evident.
Dobson is producing offensively at a slightly higher rate than the 50 points he’s averaged the last two seasons, but the real steps have been taken on the other end.
Dobson is winning his battles, using his stick better and getting the puck up the ice more efficiently.
Where his minutes last year reflected a coaching staff that did not entirely trust him in the defensive zone, they now show someone being used in all situations.
Over 10 percent fewer of his faceoffs are in the offensive zone at five-on-five, his even-strength minutes are up by 3:09 per game, he is on the penalty kill. If the All-Star Game was this weekend, Dobson would be a shoo-in to represent the Islanders.
“The big thing is confidence, right? He’s playing good and he feels good,” Adam Pelech, Dobson’s usual partner, told The Post.
“And when you feel like things are going your way, you can definitely raise your game. So I think a big part of it was confidence.
“He’s still so young. You can kinda forget how young he is, cause it feels like he’s been here forever. But that just happens with age and development at that point. You improve a lot over those years in your early 20s.”
At 256 career games, there are only two defensemen from Dobson’s draft class who have played more: Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin and Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes.
Dobson is fast becoming a franchise cornerstone for the Islanders in the same way those two players have become for their teams.
“[His] ceiling is one of the best defensemen in the league,” Pelech said.
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