Islanders Gameday: Brother, can you spare more than two goals?

5 days ago 2

The Islanders host the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night on Long Island with a couple more lineup updates.

Marshall Warren has been returned to Bridgeport, which — along with yesterday’s practice — would seem to indicate another run of Adam Boqvist on his offhand on the third pair with Scott Mayfield.

And Bo Horvat, as expected, is out after leaving the Mammoth loss injured. Patrick Roy said he won’t play “this week” so hopefully that means a shorter term on the shelf, though maybe it means they’re trying to avoid surgery but won’t know until whatever he hurt has a chance to calm down.

Finally, Ilya Sorokin is “available,” as they say in the Premier League, and will back up David Rittich.

Beyond all that, there is the matter that the Islanders have gone eight games without scoring more than two goals, leading to some line shuffling by Patrick Roy yesterday:

The Leafs are coming off a big comeback — three goals down — win over the Jets, where Auston Matthews had a hat trick to pass Pat LaFontaine for most hat tricks by an American. The Leafs have rebounded lately to climb to two points shy of the wild card in the East’s Crapola Soup, but they are again without Chris Tanev.

Islanders News

In link form:

Sorokin set to be backup tonight, start against New Jersey on Tuesday. Horvat to be reevaluated in a week. And Max Shabanov and Max Tsyplakov will play together for the first time. [Isles | Newsday | THN]
Warren returned to Bridgeport. [Isles]
Previewing tonight, with lots of the same info. [Isles]
Matthew Schaefer is handling not getting called to the Olympics at age 18 just fine, stop calling it a “snub.” [Newsday | THN]
The Swedes also dealt with not getting selected. [Post]

Elsewhere

Yesterday for the NHL was about a warm-weather Winter Classic, where Mika Zibanejad woke up and scored a hat trick in a Rangers 5-1 win in Miami. [Sportsnet]
How super sophomore and Olympian Macklin Celebrini made himself impossible to ignore. [Sportsnet]
Continuing the Olympic curse started by Bo Horvat, Seth Jones left yesterday’s game with an injury after being named to the U.S. squad. [NHL]
Apparently Adam Fox is supposed to have some divine right to be on the Olympic team? Lots of hay being made about his exclusion. Although when you see Jones on there instead… [Post]
Bill Guerin praised the chemistry of the Four Nations squad — with only three changes since then (so maybe Fox just has too much Stench of Ranger on him?) [NHL]
Rasmus Andersson will carry on a family tradition as a member of Team Sweden. [Sportsnet]