Isles Comings and Goings
January 6th, 2007 by murph
Get your scorecards here! You can’t tell the players without a scorecard! A few roster changes for tonight’s game in Carolina.
- Shawn Bates is out tonight with a hand injury. If I remember correctly, he got popped blocking a Devils’ shot on Thursday night. Frans Nielsen has been called up from Bridgeport to take his roster spot.
- Satan should play tonight, he sat out part of Thursday’s game and Friday’s practice with a swollen ankle.
- As mentioned here yesterday, defenseman Fred Meyer is expected to make his Islanders debut.
- Garth Snow…The Hardest Working GM in the League? Isles made a minor league deal with Ottawa yesterday.
- Newsday’s Greg Logan looks at the new-look Islanders roster on his Newsday blog.
- Milbury is gone (sort of) but Milbury bashing never dies. Thursday night’s hero for the Devils, Zach Parise could have been an Islander. Eric at Off Wing Opinion looks at another one of Mad Mike’s blunders. Maybe one of these days Nilsson will join the big club and exonerate Milbury.
The New York Islanders have recalled center Frans Nielsen from the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey League. Nielsen, a 2002 third round draft pick of the Islanders, is poised to become the first Danish-born player to ever appear in an NHL game.
In 33 games with Bridgeport this season, Nielsen has scored 10 goals with 13 assists for 23 points and 4 penalty minutes. He also had a +3 plus/minus rating. Nielsen was signed by the Islanders to a two-year contract on May 15, 2006.
The Ottawa Senators completed a minor trade Friday, sending defenseman Tomas Malec to the New York Islanders for center Matt Koalska.
Koalska was assigned to Binghamton of the American Hockey League.
A fifth-round pick of Nashville in 2000, Koalska was signed by New York as a free agent in August 2004. The 26-year-old native of Minnesota has split time this season with Bridgeport and Hershey, recording three goals and two assists in 14 games.
Koalska made his NHL debut with the Islanders last season, registering two penalty minutes in three contests.
Malec, who was selected in the third round of the 2001 draft by Florida, collected a goal and 12 assists in 33 games with Binghamton this campaign. The 24-year-old Slovakian has appeared in 45 NHL contests with Carolina and Ottawa, notching two assists and 47 penalty minutes.
But it wasn’t to be. Instead, with the 17th pick in the first round Milbury, most likely going with the advice of another ex-Islander, Andres Kallur, snapped up Robert Nilsson, son of ex-NHLer Kent Nilsson. Just two picks later, the Devils snapped up Zach at #19.
And while Nilsson is still a promising prospect a little less than a week short of his 22nd birthday, he’s still in the AHL with Bridgeport while the younger Parise is making a significant one at the NHL level right now.
In isolation, it’s just the sort of judgement call NHL GMs are forced to make in the draft every single year. But when you match it up with the remainder of Milbury’s record as a GM, his tenure on the Island looks all the more disastrous.
