CrashingTheGoalie

The Islanders of today remind me of the Canucks of yesterday – bringing up prospects too soon to see if they will sink or swim.

Greg Logan of  Newsday writes:

“[Because the Islanders have traded away so much of their talent in the past] GM Garth Snow and coach Scott Gordon are dedicated to the development of the franchise’s latest first-round picks, Josh Bailey and Kyle Okposo, who combined to produce the first goal in the Isles’ 3-1 win Thursday night in Ottawa.

It was one step in the right direction of the long journey to respectability that lies ahead.

Nurturing the kids

In another setting with an established playoff team with plenty of top-line talent, the Islanders could bring their young players along gradually and put the pressure to produce all on the shoulders of the veterans. But new coach Gordon is in a different situation. He and Snow need to see what they have, so, they might ride a little longer with kids who aren’t producing right away to allow them to gain experience while building a body of work that will determine their future with the franchise.

“I’m looking at the big picture here,” Gordon said. “As much as we want them to get minutes. They also have the responsibility to earn it, too. Somewhere down the road, it would be nice to say that Kyle is going to be on our top power play. But there also has to be an element of earning your ice time.

“Pretty consistently, every rookie is getting over 10 minutes a game. But they can’t just feel that it’s handed to them. If they go out there, they’ve got to know there’s consequences for poor play. Hopefully, along the way, you get a level of consistency from all our young players so they realize, ‘Hey if I’m playing well, I’m going to get more minutes.’ There’s a fine line between developing young guys and just handing it to them. You’ve got to compete every shift.”

Although Okposo has just two goals in 16 games and Jeff Tambellini has yet to score a goal, Gordon said he looks for the positives in their games and has seen recent progress in terms of skating, knowing where to go and getting involved physically on a consistent basis.

“Even though they’re not getting the offensive results we’d like, there’s progress made in their work ethic, their conditioning, their compete level,” Gordon said. “Eventually, they’re going to get a comfort level with being in scoring situations and burying their chances.

Isles number

2: That’s the number of regulation losses this season for the Islanders when they were leading after two periods (4-2-1). It’s also the number of regulation losses for the Islanders over the past two seasons combined when they were leading after two periods (51-2-7).

Endquote

Gordon on rookie Josh Bailey’s ability to handle power play duty so well in his first two NHL games: “That’s why he was drafted No. 1. It’s a hard thing for a spectator to see that a guy has that hockey intelligence. It doesn’t show up unless you’re looking for it. Our scouts and management identified an intangible that he has that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet.”