Gonna keep it brief this morning, headed to good ol’ Roosevelt Field this afternoon to fight the hordes finish my shopping and then headed to the Coliseum for tonight’s game.
- Nice game by the Isles last night - four freakin’ goals?!?! Nice! They played hard, traded goals with the Pens in the first and second, and then two quick goals in the third got them the win. Blake Comeau got his first NHL point on an assist on the game tying goal, and then his first NHL goal was the game winner. He also picked up his first NHL first star of the game award. Congrats Blake on an impressive night. Trent Hunter scored 37 seconds later to give the Isles a 2 goal lead. As usual - Pens get all the calls - 6 PP for the Pens, 2 for the Isles. How about that last penalty to Guerin? What a joke - it certainly looked like he might hook Crosby on the play, but Crosby skated right out of it and was barely bothered by it, while the over-protective zebras called the penalty anyways. Joke. Good to see Sid “The Thug” Crosby kept his gloves on last night.
- Isles take on the Caps tonight, losers of two straight. Check out Caps’ blog Japer’s Rink preview of tonight’s game.
Basically, there are two ways the Caps can head into the Christmas break - on a high note and no more than seven points out of eighth place in the Eastern Conference or… well… “other.” Tonight’s game on Long Island, of course, will go a long way towards determining how merry the Caps’ collective Christmas is, and while it’s never easy to win on the road in the NHL, the Caps have a lot going for them tonight.
- Ted Nolan will not be behind the Isles’ bench tonight, and no, that doesn’t mean Al Arbour is coaching again (damn!). Ted’s son Brandon will be making his NHL debut in Tampa. Ted Nolan told Greg Logan:
Now you have a sense of what fathers feel like when their sons play for the first time in the National Hockey League. Fathers are very proud, and I’m no different. My wife [Sandra] and younger son will be flying down to Tampa to watch him play tomorrow night, and we’ll all get together for a Christmas celebration.
That’s all I got this morning - check the recommended links to the right for some more reading materials. See you late tonight or tomorrow morning for the Isles/Cap recap as the Isles head into the short holiday break (Jason Blake and Toronto come into town the day after Christmas).
So much for the fast start to the season. The Islanders continue to hover just above .500 and cannot get any momentum or excessive scoring going, dropping Saturday night’s game at the Coliseum to Pittsburgh 3-2. The Isles have not won back to back games in almost a month, dating back to mid-November and consecutive wins vs. the Rangers and Devils. Ah, the good ol’ days of mid-November.
The Isles fell behind early (bad) 2-0 partial thanks to an awful giveaway by M.A.B in his own defensive zone that led to a Sydney Crosby goal - like he needs any help scoring? The Isles came back though (good) to tie the game at 2 in the second period thanks to goals from Park and Vasicek who leads the team with 10 goals now. For illustrative purposes, Kovalchuk leads the league with 26. The Isles are 2nd to last in league scoring, the only silver lining being that the one team worse than us…is the Rangers. Back to Saturday night, later in the second period there’s some pushing and shoving between Witt and Crosby, two Pens jump in to remind Witt about their “no-touch” insurance policy on Sid. Vasicek jumps in to Witt’s defense, and after the zebras sort it out, the Pens get an early Christmas powerplay (No! Not the Pens! They never catch a break.) as Witt and Vasicek are sent to the Isles box, but only Whitney for the Pens. On the ensuing powerplay, Pittsburgh scores to make it 3-2 and that’s final goal of the game. Coach Nolan’s STILL looking for the extra penalty on that scrum.
“I still can’t understand how two guys have a little pushing match, and then two guys jump one of our guys and we end up in a short-handed situation,” Nolan said.
The Isles play a decent third period, creating chances to try and find the tying goal…and then Chris Simon gets all boneheaded on us…again. Simon takes an “attempt to injure” major penalty for using his skate to stomp on Jarkko Ruutu’s foot as both of them left the ice after a shift. Ruutu fell to the ice, but was not injured. The Isles spend 5 of the last 6 minutes of the game on the penalty kill - which surprisingly produces some of their best chances to score in the period, including a Mike Sillinger breakaway, but can’t find the equalizer.
Simon has been given a leave of absence by the team in advance of his 7th career NHL suspension. Having just completed a 25-game suspension in October, Simon is likely to have the rulebook thrown at him by NHL Dean of Discipline Colin Campbell, because of his repeat offender status. While this incident wasn’t as bad as the stick swinging incident from last year, I still think Simon is looking at 20-25 games again and probably some league mandated anger-management classes. Off the ice he sounds like a great guy, but on the ice he’s shown a history of not respecting his opponents, not thinking before he acts, and not acting in the best interest of his team. It is possible his Islanders and even NHL career could be over because of this incident.
If you play or played organized hockey, you probably know a guy like Chris Simon. He might have even been on your team. The guy who always loses his cool, takes the extra penalty, or takes the pointless, unprovoked penalty. The guy in front of the net who always has to get the last shove in. The guy who’s slashes like he’s chopping wood. Or the absolute worst guy in men’s league - the guy who forgets it’s all for fun and everyone has to go to work in the morning. The guy with no respect for his opponents and just wants to fight and hurt people. On the ice, in the parking lot, wherever.
Now I’m not saying Chris Simon is as bad as “that guy” or that he wants to fight Ruutu in the parking lot. I’m just saying if you’ve played organized hockey, you’ve seen a guy like this who loses his temper a bit too often. Simon’s been lucky that no one has been seriously hurt from his actions, he’s going to run out of luck…or second chances, very soon.
Two days and more than 200 additional responses later, the Islanders’ “What do you want this Holiday Season?” poll results are stll amazing to me. They basically haven’t changed one bit in the last 48 hours. Currently, 34% of the 982 respondents would rather get an autographed jersey or tickets to a game than witness a successful Islanders season. I might be the only person who thinks this is crazy but I can’t help myself, I tend to obsess about unimportant things like this.
DP An All-Star?
In other Islander news, Coach Ted tells Islanders.com that he believes Rick DiPietro should make the all-star team. Always nice when a coach supports a player like that. It’s also smart.
“To be an All-Star is to be valuable to your team,” explained Nolan. “And you look at the importance of Rick. Some times we’ve had trouble scoring goals, but thankfully we have Ricky in net because he can stop a majority of the opportunities against us.”
I think DP does a bit more than stop the majority of the opportunities against the Isles. He’s a freak back there who, save for an occassional over-aggressive misstep, is the team’s rock and clearcut MVP. Still, he’s going to get a lot of competition from Boston’s Tim Thomas, Henrik Lunqvist of the Rangers, and the legend that is Martin Brodeur.
Check out the latest goalie stats here.
One more thing, how about Brendan Witt’s Fu Manchu? Best facial hair of the season. Hands down. Hope he keeps it.
Well it had to happen sooner or later, you didn’t really expect the Isles to sweep all 8 games from the Rangers this season - did you? An outplayed and outhustled Islanders team fell 4-2 to the Rangers last night at the Garden. The Isles lack of offense continues to be an issue with two or fewer goals in 11 straight games now. One of last night’s Islanders goals was actually put in the net by a Ranger player for us, thanks!
The Isles powerplay which had gotten off to a fast start has disappeared - 0/4 in the first period and 1/5 in the game. While the Rangers were 2/5 with the man advantage and outshot the Isles 31-24. The Ranger$ $tar$ decided to showed up for this game with goals from Drury, Gomez, and Jagr.
With Sean “The Pest” Avery out, Ryan Hollweg took up the role of Rangers A-Hole last night threatening to rip the stitches out of Radek Martinek’s face.
Martinek, a non-threatening defenseman, received 15 stitches Wednesday night after being cut by a skate blade during the Islanders’ 3-2 shootout win over Ottawa.
“Give Martinek credit, playing after an injury like that,” Islanders coach Ted Nolan said. “In this game, you have to have some respect. When a guy like Hollweg tries to scratch an open cut on someone’s face, that’s not professional. It’s not a classy thing to do.”
“He said he is going to take my stitches out. I think that was stupid,” said Martinek, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound defenseman.
Martinek added that no damage was done, but said he had never seen a player act in such a way.
“No, no. Never, never,” he said. “I think he could show a little bit of respect, but he didn’t. I cannot respect him.”
Stay classy NYR, stay classy. After 4 games in the first two months of the season, these teams won’t see each other again until March.
Isles head down to Atlanta Saturday night. I’ll be in VT snowboarding, hopefully Tommy can hook you guys up with a recap Sunday morning. Let it snow!!
Here’s what some of the players and coaches had to say following last night’s 3-2 Islander loss in OT at the hands of the Dallas Stars. Isles did a great job making sure they left the Coliseum with a point after it looked like the Stars would get the regulation victory.
“I don’t sense any frustration on the team yet,” Miro Satan told Newsday. “Our record is fine, and there’s enough experience and grit on this team to go through that.”
“The puck goes to one of the most skilled guys in the history of the game,” Coach Ted Nolan said to Newsday regarding Mike Modano’s game-winner. “It’s just one of those things.”
“It was one of those games where maybe we shouldn’t have gotten a point, but we found a way,” Nolan said.
“The thing you love about (Modano) is he’s getting into the battles,” Stars Coach Dave Tippett told the Dallas Morning News. “The winning goal is one in which he beat somebody to get to the space. It was a hard goal. Mo can be a real factor in games when he plays like that.”
“We took the responsibility for everyone to come ready to play in any situation they are put it in,” Modano told the Dallas newspaper. “The positive is we’re winning games, and everybody feels like they’re contributing and playing well collectively.”
“Normally I would just take him out, but I thought I still had a chance,” Stars goalie Marty Turco said to the Associated Press regarding Richard Park and his shorthanded goal. “You win some, you lose some.”
“We fought all game and did a pretty good job staying with our game plan,” Islanders forward Mike Comrie told the AP. “We got a good power-play goal at the end, but it’s disappointing when you give up that point.”
Radiohead, U2, Britney Spears * …Ted Nolan? What’s on YOUR iPod?
* For illustrative purposes only. Not actually on my iPod.
Ted’s Time is a new program hosted by Ted Nolan, in what we believe to be the first weekly video podcast to be hosted by a head coach of a professional sports team.
Ted’s Time gives Coach Nolan a chance to speak directly to the fans, no matter where the team is! He will introduce his favorite highlights and sound bites from the week, and answer your questions, submitted to NewYorkIslanders.com.
Please follow the directions below to subscribe to our podcast for free in iTunes:
1. Open iTunes
2. Go to “Advanced”-> “Subscribe to podcast”
3. Paste the following link into the new window: http://islanders.nhl.com/podcasts/TedTime.xml
You can also just search the iTunes store for “New York Islanders” or “Ted Nolan” and then look under the podcast results. I just watched the newest episode, it’s well produced and pretty slick. Kind of like a “Best Of” for all the IslandersTV coverage they produce with Coach Nolan as your host. I love IslandersTV but don’t check it out or watch it as much as I would like to. I can pretty easily subscribe to this and watch the short episodes (10 mins) on the way to work.
Exactly 20% of the NHL season’s games have been played so far after last night and James Mirtle decided to take a look at the standings and scoring trends so far. There’s still plenty of season to be played, but it’s fun to look at these kind of stats - like the Islanders and Rangers meeting in the first round of the playoffs if they started today.
The team obviously can’t and won’t win every game. What’s important as the season goes on is to keep their momentum, and avoid prolonged slumps like that 6 game losing streak from last season.
Despite only playing 13 games, people are starting to take notice of the Isles’ hot start. Mirtle is ready to alter his betting habits.
Maybe what’s most surprising has been the hot start of teams like the Islanders, Boston, Columbus and Chicago, teams that received zero respect in preseason predictions. (If I had to pick just one reason, it’d be coaching, as all four men have done an amazing job behind the bench with these teams so far. I keep saying not to bet against Ted Nolan and then breaking my own rule, and it’s hard to believe the way that team has played — something that’s been obscured by the fact they’ve played the fewest games in the league. This is a club on pace for more than 110 points.)
