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Tone-setter for this road trip. Win and things feel cheery heading into Philadelphia. Lose, and the specter of "another Philly game" hangs over the first half of this four-game trip. No pressure, Rick DiPietro. Cam Ward at the other end.
Meanwhile: The Islanders have signed Trevor Gillies, playing with Bridgeport all year (123 PIM in 18 games), to an NHL contract. Gillies is a former Hurricane property; here's his fight card. Whenever his name comes up, all I hear is "This is not the Gillies you are looking for." But that's not fair -- there was only one Clark. And Scott Gordon, appropriately, wants guys to actually throw a check here and there. Tim Jackman insurance, puttin' on the phoil for Philly, or coincidence? [Update: Not coincidence at all; Gillies joins the team for Philadelphia. Ha!]
And in Katie Strang's gameday post, she writes that Mark Streit has talked with multiple players about understanding the importance of this trip, while Gordon wants them to put the Capitals game behind them, and Bruno Gervais and Andrew MacDonald are likely to get some PP time with Jack Hillen out.
Game lyric: "Come in, she said, I'll give ya' ... shelter from the storm."
SITE UPDATE: Finally, you might soon notice, we have an NHL video player added to the right margin of the site. It pushes FanShots down further (as well as other stuff) but will provide quick access to Islanders game video. I know there's a lot of noise on the site already, but this could be cool and isn't supposed to slow load times. If you have any opinions, complaints, suggestions on that or other things, feel free to let me know in any form (privately or via comments, I've no preference). I will probably still include game highlights video in the game recaps though, because I like having a record to look back on a game -- not just what happened but how stupidly wrong I was about it at the time.