Ethan Sears
38 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche said last week that Barzal would likely only need a few practices with the team once he was back on the ice, which could in theory slate him for a return as soon as next week.
🔮 He will undergo surgery to repair the injury and miss 6-8 months.
🔮 If Romanov misses time, the immediate question is whether the Islanders will look to call up Isaiah George, who entered camp as a likely third-pair defenseman before losing the job, or Kashawn Aitcheson, the top prospect who likely outplayed George in camp.
🔮 While Varlamov will want more performance-wise — he gave up three goals on 22 shots before the Rangers scored twice into an empty net — if there was ever a night in which a player was above criticism, this was it.
🔮 The Islanders might be in a tight race again, and so there may come a point in the season where it gets hard to rest Sorokin.
🔮 The Devils couldn’t say they were terribly outplayed.
🔮 He knows that description probably isn’t quite right, but he expects others who have been through the same injury will know what he’s talking about.
🔮 There’s been a theory that while NHL stars will see huge paydays as a result of the cap increase, the trickle-down effect on players lower on the depth chart will be minimal.
🔮 On the night, they either narrowly won or narrowly lost the expected goals, depending on your preferred advanced stats website, and DeBoer will use the numbers as a barometer for how his team is adapting.
🔮 In Duclair’s first couple of seasons as an Islander, the nights when he looked like the player they thought they were signing in 2024 have been few and far between, with a torn groin ruining his 2024-25 season before an up-and-mostly-down 2025-26 in which he spent nearly as much time as a healthy scratch as he did in the top six.
The question going into camp this year wasn’t whether Duclair would find his 25-goal form so much as whether he would be in the lineup.
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The Aporia
