Well all good things come to an end, as Bridgeport finally dropped a game in the month of January. BP though had 2 3rd Period comebacks to force overtime. Winning 2 of 3 games this week, Bridgeport have over taken their Connecticut rivals for first in the northeast. Another big week for Casey Cizikas, who posted 4 goals and 5 assists. He's also moved up to 19th overall in points in the AHL and 4th among AHL rookies. Kevin Poulin started every game, including a 50 save performance.

Wednesday January 25th Vs St John's (Jets)

Cizikas opened up the scoring with a PP goal during a 5 on 3, assists going to Jeremy Colliton and Aaron Ness. Within 5 minutes St John's scored 3 PP goals, including one during a 4 on 3. Matt Donovan helped powered the Bridgeport comeback, scoring a goal (Rhett Rakhshani, Cizikas) and assisting on Cizikas' game tying goal (Rakhshani, Donovan). Poulin had 26 saves on 29 shots. In the shootout, BP lost 2-1. Despite having a hand in every goal, Cizikas was only named 2nd star. Rakhshani was named 3rd star of the night. Highlights

Friday January 27th Vs Adirondack (Flyers)

That BP came out of the first period with the score tied at 1 had everything to do with Poulin. Adirondack posted 25 shots in the first period alone. Justin DiBenedetto (Ness, Scott Olesky) scored his tenth goal of the year to tie things up with a minute left in the period. 2 Power Play goals by Jeremy Colliton (Rakhshani, Cizikas) and Jon Landry (Ty Wishart, DiBenedetto) put BP ahead for the rest of the night. A shorthanded goal by Trevor Frischmon (Cizikas) made the rout that much more obvious. An Adirondack goal in the 3rd was answered by goals from Tyler McNeely and Cizikas (Olesky). First star of the game Kevin Poulin (52 saves), second star was Justin Debendetto. Highlights

Satuday January 28th Vs Syracuse (Ducks)

Poulin said they robbed this game from Syracuse and I have to agree. After Kael Mouillierat (Haley, Ullstrom) scored in the first to tie things, it didn't look good for BP. They gave up two goals to Peter Holland before Cizikas (Jon Landry, Wishart) found the back of the net to get them back within 1. Syracuse scored another one to make it a 2 goal game again. Shorthanded Michael Haley (Cizikas) scored to get it close again and Scott Howes (Cizikas, Rakhshani) scored in the final 30 seconds with the goalie pulled to force OT. BP won the shootout with scores from Howes and Ullstrom. Ullstrom was named 1st star, Cizikas 3rd star.

Highlights from the winning streak. Highlights from last weeks Saturday night game.

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Yesterday we looked at some of our qualitative impressions of the Islanders season thus far, with a glance toward next month's trade deadline.

Today's roundtable focuses a little more on the future: Second-half predictions, free agency possibilities, and criteria for decisions on the coaching staff. Of relevance to some of this discussion is afrosupreme's timely gander at the (as of now) UFA defensemen class for 2012.

Cheers to everyone who provided their own thoughtful answers yesterday. Of course you're invited to do the same with these.

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Some of the big league news from the All-Star Break includes some tinkering trades and Ryan Suter explicitly stating he won't re-sign with the Predators before the deadline (despite happy talk, that can't be good).

But for Islanders fans, John Tavares' media stint can only further reinforce confidence in the 21-year-old's future. What's scarier for opponents than an already immensely talented player using each summer to get better?

The relentless self-improver was asked about his much-lauded offseason work that has paid dividends this year:

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Editor's Note: FanPost front-paged here. No further intro needed.

I know it's a little early to start eyeing up free agents, but hey, we're Islander fans -- we're used to thinking about the offseason while there's still snow on the ground. And while I'm excited to watch the rest of the season play out, I've also come to some conclusions based on what I've seen the past few months about what I hope the summer brings.

It's hard to say what kind of spending the Islanders will do this offseason. They should have somewhere between $13-$20 million coming off the books depending on who re-signs or retires. Right now their cap payroll for next season is around $32M. Hopefully, that will soon be somewhere around $38M, with P.A. Parenteau and Frans Nielsen safely resigned. Another $2M for Matt Martin and David Ullstrom and you get to $40M, or around $9M shy of where they are now, with several spots to fill in still, largely on defense.

I believe they will fill forward vacancies from within next year, but they are likely looking at three new defenders to line up with Mark Streit, Travis Hamonic, and Andrew MacDonald. You hope a Calvin de Haan or Matt Donovan can grab one of those spots with strong play later this season, or in camp next year, but I wouldn't expect to see more than one rookie on the blue line in 12-13.

However, there are quite a few appealing free agents on defense this year, many more than I can remember in a while.

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By the numbers, the New York Islanders special teams are responsible for the team's relative improvement now (19-22-7) over last year (16-27-7) at the All-Star Break. The 19.5% powerplay ranks 6th overall and the 84.9% penalty kill ranks eighth in the NHL. At 5-on-5 their goals for/against ratio of 0.73 is bottom of the league.

A league-high 10 empty net goals allowed skews the picture slightly, and one possible bright spot is that their shot differential has improved both overall (30.1 shots per game vs. 29.9 allowed) and at 5-on-5 shots per 60 minutes (29.8 for, 29.1 against). Their Fenwick (shots fired +/-) with the score tied or close has them in the middle of the league with a 49.54 percent of possession, though as mentioned last week that's driven by John Tavares line.

As covered in the first-half report card for each player there are signs of improvement, but any season carries a mix of unsustainable or surprise factors that influence the result. A positive sign may be that the areas needing improvement are clear and the roster openings to address them are so apparent they will have to be addressed both from outside and from below.

We'll get to that in the second part of our mid-season roundtable, but here is Part 1, in which our authors share their surprises, disappointments and trade deadline expectations. As always, weigh in with your own.

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New York Islanders All-Star and possibly 26th-best NHL player under 25 John Tavares was selected in the 16th round (of 19) in last night's All-Star draft. Logan Couture was your last man standing.

There were rules that mandated goalies going by a certain round and defensemen too, so I'm not sure if you interpret any strategy beyond that.

Read a link to those rules in Keith and Mark's fun fantasy draft piece from yesterday, which also served as a draft thread of sorts as well as a chance to banter with the source of the "Tavares isn't in the top 25?" angst of the past week.

There are more breakdowns at nhl.com and Puck Daddy, where they also have goofy stories like Carey Price being selected while in mid-drink, and something about Scott Hartnell and Joffrey Lupul jockeying for bathroom position during a commercial break. No word whether Corey Perry took the opportunity to crosscheck them.

A few Islanders and assorted links follow:

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It's been a couple of years since the Islanders have had a participant in the actual NHL all-star game [Full list here complete with injury and petulance replacements]. Michael Grabner was invited as a rookie for the skill challenge last year, but prior to that, you'd have to go back to Mark Streit in the '08-'09 season for participation in the all-star game itself. John Tavares is now beginning what Islanders fans hope will be an annual rite of passage that he can blow off in a few years when he's tired or suspended.

In light of the achievement, I've personally decided I'll watch the game this year and Mark and I decided to run a mock draft of the participants to get our inner GM on. [*Disclaimer, both GMs have limited knowledge of some of the players on our squads, did not look into any type of advanced statistics...or um, statistics, and really, did this mostly off the cuff. Don't Neil Greenberg my list.] We will use the rosters to play a one off fantasy match for bragging rights. The actual draft will be tonight on NBC Sports Network at 8pm. [Full coverage information here]

After the jump, the explanation of the selection process, the fantasy scoring criteria, and some breakdowns and observations about the rosters.

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