Good Morning, Islanders Country.
There is a lot of hockey left to play in the 2021-22 season. A few weeks back, that was undeniably a good thing. It was reason for hope. A reason to beLIeve as they say around these parts. Now, there’s less time, but still, a lot of games remaining, yet has their best opportunity to make a run passed by?
The Islanders had games in hand, they were going to get healthier, they were going to find their rhythm and get back into striking distance of a playoff spot by the All-Star break, especially with all those home games to play.
But as we’ll get into in a bit, they have actually fallen further from the final playoff spot since their 11 game stretch before the All-Star break began on Jan. 13th. Whatever wiggle room the team had is gone and the thin margin of error is now microscopic.
Coming up, Barry Trotz questions a question, and Brendan Burke makes the Olympic team. Plus, the Zdeno Chara goal watch continues, we celebrate “The Russian Hipster” and an extended story on an Isles fan in search of a kidney donor.
Let’s dive in.
📰 NEWS: The Islanders welcome the Ottawa Senators to UBS Arena for the first time later tonight. The Isles have beaten the teams they should beat - and the Sens and Wednesday’s opponent, the Seattle Kraken fit into that category. But they haven’t beat the teams they could beat. The Islanders had an 11 game stretch with 10 at home following the return from their latest pause. The best they can now do is pick 14 of 22 points. Good, but good isn’t good enough when you needed to play great.
As Kevin Kurz wrote in The Athletic, the Islanders’ failure to pick up any points against some of the league’s top teams has them in a worse position than when this hopeful stretch of games began.
The Washington Capitals, Toronto Maple Leafs and Minnesota Wild are all legitimate threats to win the Stanley Cup this season and were really the only three teams that could realistically provide elite-level opposition for the Islanders, who were supposed to be in that same stratosphere this season. Now, those three opponents, all in the top 10 in the league in goal differential, have come and gone, taking with them two points apiece while leaving the Islanders with a big, fat goose egg.
Though the Islanders have taken care of business against the New Jerseys, Arizonas and Philadelphias of the world, and could very well polish off bottom-feeders such as Ottawa and Seattle later this week, there’s not much more reason to believe they can get back into the playoff race now than there was before this stretch began. In fact, they’ve lost ground, going from 16 points out of the second wild-card spot on Jan. 13, to 17 points back now
"We have 40, almost 45 games left," Trotz said after Sunday’s loss. "I can’t tell you what the other teams are going to do, but we’ve got to gain some ground. We’ve just got to worry about the next game.”
The next game and the one after are should wins and must-haves to keep the glimmer of playoff hope a possibility.
?Q & A: After last night’s 4-3 loss, Andrew Gross of Newsday asked Barry Trotz what many of us were thinking. Does he want a shot like Oliver Wahlstrom’s out there in the final minute? I mean, I would. You would. It seemed like a fair question, made more interesting since Wahlstrom was stapled to the bench following his goal with four minutes remaining.
Trotz didn’t seem to understand why the question was being asked. He explained that Wahlstrom is on one of their 6 on 5 units, which moves around all the time, and that some other guys were just going better. The topic seemed to irritate him a bit.
Fast forward to the 3:30 mark for the exchange:
It’s been difficult for some fans to process some of Trotz’s decision-making as of late, especially as it relates to one of the team’s top goal scorers in Wahlstrom. With the team being outscored 61-30 in games against teams in playoff position, it’s not difficult to think of the type of player you’d want out there near the end of an important game.
Kyle Palmieri’s return surely threw a wrench into the situation, and his strong play, despite not scoring in his first game back, helped get him onto the ice in the dying minutes of the game against the Wild. But let’s also not forget that goal-scoring leader for the Islanders, Brock Nelson, was out there and helped generate a number of chances as the game wound down. Whether Wahlstrom should’ve been on the ice or not, the team’s loss wasn’t due to a lack of chances in the final two minutes with the extra skater on.
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders have back-to-back games before the All-Star break, starting tonight against the Ottawa Senators followed by a visit from Jordan Eberle and the expansion Seattle Kraken on Wednesday.
📊 STANDINGS:
🥇 GOLDEN VOICE: Play-by-play announcer Brendan Burke has already called the Olympics, just not Olympic hockey. Last summer, Burke called rowing, but this time he will join Kenny Albert, John Walton, and Chris Vosters as NBC Sports’ hockey play-by-play announcers. Congrats to Brendan on the latest great opportunity to show off his broadcasting skills to a national audience and beyond.
🥅 JAKUB’S LADDER: Like their big brothers, the Bridgeport Islanders (15-18-4-4) are trying to work their back into the playoff picture and are starting to make up ground in the Atlantic Division race, having recorded at least one point in nine of their 11 games (5-2-3-1). Behind their recent resurgence has been the play of 2018 3rd round selection, Jakub Skarek.
Per Patrick Williams in theAHL.com:
Brent Thompson and the Islanders continue to rely heavily on 22-year-old goaltender Jakub Skarek, who has blossomed with a heavy workload this season in Bridgeport. Skarek now has gone unbeaten in regulation for seven consecutive decisions (5-0-2) following his 33-save night in Hershey and is 12-8-4 with a 2.76 goals-against average and .911 save percentage for the season.
“Maturity and control [are] probably the biggest things,” Thompson said of Skarek’s signs of growth. “I think he’s a mature kid. He’s understanding things are going to happen in a game and his reaction to those things, whether they’re negative or positive, he’s level, even-keeled.
“So that maturity, that growth there, just his confidence in general, I think he’s doing a really good job with it.”
In 26 games this season, Skarek owns a respectable 2.76 GAA and 0.911 save percentage but has really come on in the last month. Since Jan 1, he has stopped 206 of 221 shots for an impressive 0.932 save percentage and a 2.14 GAA.
📚 SOUND SMART: The Zdeno Chara goal watch continued against the Wild, though he got close, hitting the post midway through the game on Sunday night.
His last goal in an Islander uniform came on January 12, 2001, against the Pittsburgh Penguins, or 7,691 days ago as you read this. That’s over 21 years between goals for Chara as an Islander. In that game, the young Chara also dropped the mitts with Matthew Barnaby, an assist away from a Gordie Howe Hat Trick.
🗓 ISLE REMEMBER: Happy 38th Birthday to former-Islander Mikhail Grabovski! “Grabo’ signed a 4-year $20 million contract with the Isles before the 2014-15 season and was joined in New York by fellow Russian and Toronto Maple Leafs’ linemate Nikolay Kulemin. Unfortunately for Grabovski, his Islanders and ultimately NHL career was cut short due to lingering effects following concussions.
Still, in his brief time on Long Island and in Brooklyn, the colorful center left an impression. Do you remember the should have been award-winning documentary The Russian Hipster with Kulemin? As SportsNet wrote at the time, it had skinny jeans, it had coffee snobbery, it had vegan food - it even had the fisherman jersey!
Happy Birthday to our Russian Hipster!
🎧 Isles Fix Post Game Show: Join the Nassaumen, James and Jon, for the Isles Fix postgame show following the Islanders’ back-to-back games this week. Catch them live on YouTube or the next day wherever you get your podcasts.
🔗 ‘Frustrating as hell’: Islanders continue dropping points to above-.500 teams,” by Joe Pantorno, AMNY: “They’ve made zero ground in the playoff race as they sit 17 points out of a playoff spot — a nightmare season that has featured a 13-game road trip to start and a COVID outbreak that sidelined nearly half the roster.”
🔗 Slow start drops Islanders below .500 after loss to Wild, by Ethan Sears, The New York Post: “Five bad minutes can kill you against a good team. That’s just what happened to the Islanders on Sunday night. Against the playoff-caliber Minnesota Wild, the Isles needed to come out with a jump in their step. Instead, they were down by two goals before they could get their legs under them, on their way to a 4-3 loss that puts them below .500, at 15-16-6.”
And we leave you with this… last week, we told you the story of Madison Sanalitro. The Islanders fan that attended a game with a sign that was a plea for help as she is in need of a new kidney for the second time in her young life.
Over at NewYorkIslanders.com, Sasha Kandrach does an extended story on Madison, and how that sign has brought more attention than she could have ever imagined.
“The message was clear - and urgent. 'Calling all hockey fans! I need a kidney!' wrote the Middle Island native, with the hope that someone in the Islanders fan base - and by extension, the tight-knit hockey community - could help amplify her story and change her life for the better.”
"I had a meeting with my transplant team a couple of weeks ago," Sanalitro said. "They told me to just get my story out and to not be ashamed. I figured, I've shared and always been open about it on social media. It just made me want to go public with it and see what could happen. I didn't expect anything to happen to be honest.”
For more information on Sanalitro's story or to donate to her cause visit her GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/5facc482
For specific information or interest on how to get tested to see if you could be a match, please contact Madisonskidney@gmail.com.
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