Isles 4, Wild 1; Gillies to Have In-person Hearing

The Minnesota Wild are battling for their playoff lives, and their road trip got off to a start that they needed to avoid.

The Islanders had an excellent effort against a fairly good team, especially goaltender Niklas Backstrom who has had the Isles number since he came into the league. Backstrom was chased after giving up three unanswered goals, two to Blake Comeau.

Speaking of Comeau, there must be something with him when playing teams from the West. He now has 10 points in just 16 games when playing teams from the other conference this season. It was a year to the day after Comeau got his hat trick against the Chicago Blackhawks right after the Olympic break last season. He appears to be well on his way to notch 20 goals this year (currently at 17) which would give the Isles their 4th 20 goal scorer on the year.

I thought Frans Nielsen made some really nice plays out there, but he would tell you otherwise. Despite his three assist performance, he didn't seem too happy with his play in the postgame. I thought his play was pretty good, and can't really point to anything specific that would be considered poor. Perhaps Nielsen, one of the better defensive players in the game, has very high standards for himself and is still upset about the game against the Caps, when he was spun around multiple times by quick passing plays and Alex Ovechkin.

Al Montoya, starting after Nathan Lawson got the nod in Washington and played really well, didn't seem to miss a beat. There was no hitch in his play that would lead one to believe he was worried that his job could be on the line. Obviously, the Isles have both goaltenders battling it out for a spot in the NHL, be it here or elsewhere next season. But Montoya had taken over that starting job, and with a 1.93 GAA through his time as an Islander, the job should be his for now. Lawson hasn't been too great more often than not, and doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt just yet. For now, I see Tuesday's game in Washington as the outlier.

One of the biggest story lines in this game was Trevor Gillies returning to the line-up after missing nine games due to a suspension from the hit against Eric Tangradi in the infamous February 11th game against the Penguins. Tangradi has been sidelined with a concussion since Gillies elbowed him in the head in response to running and hurting Jack Hillen. Tangradi immediately felt the pain, and Gillies still threw some punches as Tangradi fell to the ice.

It took almost two minutes of ice time for Gillies to get in trouble again. Cal Clutterbuck boarded Justin DiBenedetto, and Gillies came in and hit Clutterbuck, causing him to fall and hurt himself in the process.

I have no doubt that Clutterbuck embellished his injury a bit. But regardless of what Clutterbuck, who appeared destined for a five minute major and a game misconduct, had done there was no need for the equally as childish actions from Gillies.

While Clutterbuck never would have accepted a challenge from Gillies, that's what you do in this situation. When he declines, everyone rides him for not fighting his own fights, and then you have guys like Matt Martin and Zenon Konopka let the hits fly fast and furiously on guys like Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Martin Havlat. In that scenario, Clutterbuck gets frowned upon for angering the Isles once again and for not accepting the fight.

Instead, Gillies comes in and takes the "eye for an eye" approach with a cheap-shot. I don't care if it's from the front, back, side - whatever you want it to be - it was still a cheap shot and the wrong way to respond in that situation.

For Gillies, this is the exact same situation as Chris Simon in the sense that their on-ice decision making, when it comes to how to properly enforce a game is way off. Gillies has the right idea, but goes about it in the completely wrong way, especially at a time when the NHL is all of a sudden deciding to take a stand for plays like these.

Gillies has a hearing in Toronto scheduled for Friday, and will undoubtedly be suspended for quite some time. Coming off a lengthy suspension and making a decision as poor as this one won't help him at all. Over the past couple of weeks, Martin has improved his play and guys like Konopka and Haley have enforced the game in good ways, and contributed as passable hockey players on the ice. In the meantime, and I know this may not be too popular with some of you, Gillies is proving to be nothing other than what many have said about him the past few weeks - a goon.

We'll see how hard the NHL comes down on Gillies, and if Clutterbuck gets anything. He was destined to in my opinion, perhaps until his injury. He may actually be concussed, but should still get something for his action too.

-CH

nyifyi@gmail.com

Isles Lose close one to Flyers

The Islanders were coming off of a 4 game winning streak, and the Flyers were unbeaten at home. Obviously, something had to give. Unfortunately, the Isles winning streak ultimately ended.

The Islanders lost to the Flyers 3-2 in a very tough game. Rick DiPietro played so-so in my opinion, but I felt the first 2 goals were not his fault. The first was off a give away in front of the net by Ruslan Fedotenko, while the 2nd was a breakaway where Bruno Gervais fell and lost his balance, leaving Scottie Upshall alone for the breakaway. The Isles had come back 2 times down by one goal off of goals by Mike Sillinger and Chris Simon.

Overall, I felt the Islanders had come out strong. However, the powerplay did not look very good at all. Marc-Andre Bergeron has been good filling in for Bryan Berard, but he had a bad game last night. It was his turnover that lead to the shorthanded goal by Mike Richards half way through the 3rd period.

The Islanders play the Penguins Thursday night in Pittsburgh. That should be an interesting one as the Isles look to rebound. It will be tough, but I think if they come out with a good effort and tighten up the defense a bit more then they should be OK.

Leafs Crush Isles 8-1, Isles Reshuffle Lineup

On Thursday the Islanders lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs 8-1. It was such a disappointment of a game from the Isles as they seemed to be just going through the motions. The defense as a whole was terrible in front of backup goalie Wade Dubielewicz.

Ruslan Fedotenko scored the only goal for the team as he deflected Bruno Gervais' shot from the point on the powerplay in the first period. The Isles went into the first intermission only down 2-1, and it seemed that they could still try and battle back. But that's when it started to go sour.

About 7 minutes into the 2nd, Thomas Kaberle scored for the Leafs and then the goals started to come. For a period and a half, the Isles were hanging in there and could have easily scored to change the momentum but failed.

One thing that killed the isles, aside from their terrible defense was penalty trouble, especially from Jeff Tambellini, who took 3 very lazy and unnecessary penalties. On the subject of special teams, the Isles power play wasn't anything exciting either. They tried to be too fancy and the men at the point, especially Marc-Andre Bergeron had a hard time controlling the puck, which lead to some shorthanded odd man rushes for Toronto, one of which they scored on.

With a tough loss like this all you can do is hang your head high and play better next time out. As I said, for a period and a half things were OK, but the Isles were unable to take control or change the momentum when they had the opportunities.

That next shot comes Saturday night against the Philadelphia Flyers. The Isles lineup will look a bit different. On Friday, the team sent down forward Jeff Tambellini, who failed to stick after getting his shot when Jon Sim went down with injury. Sean Bergenheim, who has looked good in the limited amount of ice time he has seen, now moves up to the second line to play with Miro Satan and Josef Vasicek. Chris Simon also returns for the game, and Shawn Bates is very close to returning. On defense, the Isles are scrapping the idea of going with 7 defensemen and going back to 6, which means one of Bergeron, Gervais, Bryan Berard and Chris Campoli will not be playing. Based on play, Bergeron might be the odd man out. But there has been no inclination from coach Ted Nolan as to who will be sitting.

The game is a bigger one than it might seem for so early in the year, but it is huge. You always want to win games against your division, and a win would out the isles at 4-2, 4 points better than anyone else. With the lack of games between now and the end of the month, it is important to stay up around the top of the division now so that you are not constantly playing catch up with the others. 3-3-0 is not terrible, but seeing as how bad the 2 losses have been so far, (the one against Washington should have been one, the one against Toronto might have been a loss either way), 4-2-0 would sort of make up for all of that. The return of Simon should rally the troops well, not to mention the return of Rick DiPietro to the nets. We'll see what happens.

Islanders Lose to Rangers 5-2

After all of the anticipation for the 2nd and final meeting of the preseason between the Islanders and Rangers, things didn't go quite as expected.

No, there were still fights. But some key players were missing from both sides. The Rangers had their entire lineup in with the exception of Jaromir Jagr and super pest Sean Avery. Earlier in the week, Avery had hinted at the idea of taking a run at some of the Islanders after what happened at the Coliseum last Monday. Even Andy Sutton spoke out on Avery, saying he should just focus on playing hockey. But it seemed everyone who was involved in the scrums last week from the Islander's side did not dress for the game. No Simon. No Sutton. No DiPietro.

Many of the players for the Islanders in the game will be starting the year in Bridgeport. With 3 games in 3 days, it seems the Isles didn't want to take a chance on having players get injured in a meaningless preseason game, especially with guys threatening to run others.

Brendan Shanahan scored twice, once on starter Joey MacDonald, the other on Mike Morrison. Also scoring for the Rangers were Scott Gomez and Martin Straka. Petr Prucha iced the game with an empty netter. The Isles tallies came from Sean Bergenheim and Trent Hunter.

In all honesty, there wasn't any Islander who really stood out in the game. Bergenheim showed some good speed and scored a nice 5-hole goal on Lundqvist. Darryl Bootland had a pair of fights, and will become a fan favorite down in Bridgeport, maybe even on the Island for a few stints. As for the defense, the only regulars who played were Bruno Gervais, Chris Campoli and Marc-Andre Bergeron. All 3 were OK, but they are definitely still learning. It is going to be interesting to see who gets that last spot on defense.

The Islanders play the Devils tonight at 7 PM at the home of the Sound Tigers, the Arena at Harbor Yards. The game will be shown on Islanders TV through NHL center ice. I would imagine most of the regulars will be playing tonight as the game is the 2nd to last preseason game. The Isles will play their final game tomorrow against the Bruins.

On a sad note, coach Ted Nolan lost his brother recently and did not make the trip to the Garden for last nights game. He will also miss tonight's game. His status has not been revealed for tomorrow yet. Our prayers go out to you, Ted.