Islanders Win Opener!
October 6th, 2007 by murph
Now THAT’S how you start the season on the right foot. After last year’s debacle in Phoenix - 11 penalties, 44 shots against, Ricky chased and a 6-3 loss, things had nowhere to go but up. Coach Nolan had the boys ready to play as the Islanders (somewhat) avenged their playoff defeat in Buffalo last season with a 6-4 win over the Sabres last night. The new guys were all over the scoresheet - first star of the game Mike Comrie had a 2 goal 2 assist night, Ruslan Fedotenko a goal and 2 assists, and Captain Bill Guerin with 3 assists. DiPietro had a decent game - I don’t think he saw the first goal of the game but he rebounded about 2 minutes later with a highlight reel glove save on Thomas Vanek and finished the night with 22 saves..
How about that powerplay unit? 3 for 3 last night plus a goal with a man advantage on a delayed penalty. That’s great work and we’re still trying to add Bryan Berard to that unit. Penalty kill was perfect too, 5 for 5. Our PP was awful last year, an improved PP unit will greatly help the team achieve it’s goals this season. Good start.
Not much to complain about last night’s game. Defense was a little loose for both teams but it was only the first game of the season. It’s to be expected, the Islanders need to take advantage of their opportunities again tonight. Speaking of the home opener, the barn should be rockin’ tonight after this win, I’m leaving to tailgate on this beeee-utiful October day in a couple of hours. And I still don’t like the new jerseys - they are too random, little bits of color here, a couple of stripes there, the result is changing the jersey just to change the jersey and make it look different…and it looks like crap. Thanks Reebok.
YouTube highlights aren’t up yet, so let’s try the new NHL.com embedded highlights. The size and quality is a lot nicer, but I don’t like the fact that it “autoplays” when you visit the site and even worse…it autoplays a commercial before the highlights. I can live with the commercial - I understand the league wants to make $$ by sharing the video, but please turn off the autoplay. If it gets really annoying I’ll take it down. Have fun tonight everyone, Let’s Go Islanders!
[UPDATE] Whoops! The embed broke the blog. I removed it for now, here’s the link to last night’s highlights.
[UPDATE 2] Oh, P.S. I almost forgot my rant from last night. What the %$#^@ was that on FSNY last night? Was that the Internet feed? It looked awful on Time Warner Cable in Queens last night, all it was missing was “Buffering…” It’s bad enough TW doesn’t have the HD feed, but can we do something to make the regular feed a little more watchable? I was flipping back and forth between the Isles and the Yanks in HD the difference was ridiculous. On the HD channel, I could count the tiny bugs on Joba Chamberlain’s neck while on the Islanders game the puck was just this tiny fuzzy black blur.
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