Islander Tidbits

On Monday, the Islanders received word about the status of defenseman Bryan Berard. He will miss the next 2-4 weeks with a groin injury. He hurt the groin in the second period of Saturday's game against the Devils. Fortunately for the Islanders, Berard will only miss a handful of games with the way the schedule is set up. The team plays 5 games in the next 3 weeks. So it is possible Berard will only miss the 5 games and not much more.

As do many fans, I enjoy looking at power rankings that come out from the major sports media each week. The Isles shot up the lists of many power rankings. Here are a few of note:

http://www.tsn.ca/fantasy_news/feature/?fid=548 - TSN 12th
http://www.sportsline.com/nhl/powerrankings - CBS 12th
http://msn.foxsports.com/nhl/powerRankings - Fox Sports 9th
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/powerranking - ESPN 14th

The team took a big jump in all of these from the last week. It is definitely a nice thing to see. Some weird things going on with ESPN's though in my opinion.

Right now, it appears that the team is going with the same lines as last week. The idea of don't fix what isn't broken. Still no word on Shawn Bates and his status for Saturdays game. We'll keep you updated on that front.

Check back for other news and notes as well.

Guerin gets Winner to Beat Devils 4-3 in OT

Bill Guerin scored with 3.7 seconds left in overtime to give the Islanders and 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils. It was a game that probably should have never gone to overtime though, as the Isles blew their second consecutive 2 goal lead. However, the Isles still found a way to win it and finished the week winning both their games.

Early in the game, turnovers looked like they were going to kill the Isles. Their second turnover in the first minute of the game led to a Zach Parise goal. As much as the Devils have struggled this year, you can not turn over the puck continuously to guys like Pairse, Patrik Elias, Brian Gionta and Dainius Zubrus.

The Isles came out much stronger in the 2nd period, scoring 3 goals. The first was scored right after a power play ended. Josef Vasicek took a blocked shot attempt by Miroslav Satan and moved to the front of the net and beat Kevin Weekes to tie the game. Shortly after that, Satan got one himself has he moved around Paul Martin and then a sprawling Weekes and slipped the puck passed him for the 2-1 lead. With about 8 minutes to go on the period, The Isles were on the power play. A nice pass from Ruslan Fedotenko to Bruno Gervais produced a one-timer shot from Gervais, that hit the crossbar and landed somewhere in the crease. The puck bounced out to Mike Comrie who quickly shot it passed Weekes for the 3-1 advantage. The team went into the 2nd intermission with a 2 goal lead, the worst in hockey.

The Islanders came out a bit sloppy again in the 3rd, and the Devils seemed to control more of the play. A fluke goal was scored by Jay Pandolfo when he shot the puck and it deflected off of Andy Sutton's leg and sailed over DiPietro. The Isles then failed to convert on a 4 minute power play and once it concluded, Brian Gionta tipped a Paul Martin shot in to tie the game at 3.

In Overtime, after some great end to end action that saw a flurry of saves and even Chris Campoli spoil a breakaway by Sergei Brylin, it was the heroics of the captain, Bill Guerin, who had a loose puck bounce his way and he hammered it home for the win on the power play.

Obviously, even though they scored 2 power play goals the team seemed to have trouble with some of the set ups and what not. That is most likely due to the loss of Bryan Berard, who left the game early on with what is being described now as a groin injury. With a week off, I really hope Berard can take the time to get healthy enough and get some practices in. It also appears Shawn Bates could be back for the game next Saturday as well, so it should be interesting to see who will sit in favor of him.

So a successful week in islanders hockey, and now we must wait until next Saturday until we see the Isles again.

WE'RE ON THE AIR TONIGHT: Sean and I will be on the air again tonight, at 10 PM on http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/dcox/website/listen.html. We're on webradio, not on the FM station. Just as last week, we will have a phone line and an AIM screen name running so you can send us your thoughts and questions. We'd love to hear from any fan as we love discussing hockey in general, but especially the Islanders. Hope to hear from some of you tonight. For those who can;t listen, we will put the podcast form up. We'll let you know when it is there.

New Podcast Posted and Some More Line Shuffling

Looking to spark some more offense out of the team, head coach Ted Nolan decided to switch up some of the lines at Wednesdays practice. Bill Guerin was moved to the line with Andy Hilbert and Mike Sillinger, while Trent Hunter was moved to the line with Mike Comrie and Ruslan Fedotenko on it. The Islanders first line did a great job the first couple of games, however they have cooled off since then. Time will tell if the new lines will work, but it does come as a bit of a surprise this early in the season, especially since the Fedotenko-Comrie-Guerin line looked great in preseason and the beginning of the regular season together. Hunter and Sillinger have been relatively quiet in terms of offence, so Nolan hopes the changes benefit both of them as well as the others.

Also spotted at practice was Shawn Bates. He is very close to returning, but has been cleared to play. On the teams website, Nolan said he will put Bates through rigorous practices over the next week and if he hold up well there he will return. Hopefully Bates can come in and chip in the way he once was able to before his groin issues.

Marc-Andre Bergeron appears to be the odd man out once again going into Thursday's game with Washington. Nolan said that he has to work his way back into the lineup, and Bergeron understands that. I know he is a small guy and I don't expect him to constantly hit people off the puck, but as a defenseman he should be able to poke check the puck off an opposing players stick or at the very least be able to control the puck very well on offence. Both of those aspects have been tough for Bergeron, but I do feel that he could turn it around. We'll see though.

As Sean and I said, it is interesting to think what could happen if Bergeron is unable to make the lineup again. With the recent appearance of Jeff Tambellini, one that didn't last very long, you have to wonder if there is something going on with Jeff. I know the Isles respect him and feel he is one of their top prospects, but he has been unable to stick even after Jon Sim went down with injury. If a deal came up where both Tambellini and Bergeron could be packaged, I would imagine Snow would look into it. It's no secret the team needs help offensively, not to mention a really good top pairing defenseman, but I think they can get by on what they have right now as far as defense goes. If Bergeron has a hard time making the lineup, I think this might be something worth watching more closely as time goes on because if the team continues to score goals, something could go down. Snow has already proven that he's not afraid to pull the trigger to fix his team, and that wouldn't be any different this early in the season.

Our podcast from this past Sunday is up at http://www.nyifyi.mypodcast.com/. It was our first live show and it went very well. We tried to do as much analyzing of the games that were in the past week and picked apart some specific things we noticed. Unfortunately, no one called in but hopefully as time goes by people will. For now, enjoy it and don't forget that we will have recaps of the games this week right here.

Chris