Islanders Bits: 'Fast defense,' and Strome, Ullstrom, Bailey

The Versus game last night included one of those behind-the-bench in-game interviews with the ever talkative Ken Hitchcock. Often nothing good is said there but Hitchcock, when asked about his teams' reputation for protecting leads (the Blues lost the 1-0 lead and the game), dismissed it as a holdover rep from his Dallas days in the clutch-and-trap NHL and added simply:

"To win in this league now you have to play fast defense."

One one level this is just coach-speak: There are 100 ways to describe very similar concepts every coach wants to instill. But on another level it stung to hear because a topic around here (outside of Micheal Haley's recall) has been the Islanders generally undermanned blueline and its limited mobility. Hitchcock means overall defense (including forwards), but it still applies here.

Now, reporters and broadcasters love to talk to Hitchcock because he loves to talk -- it's easy material, and I'm only proving that point with this -- but like fellow trappist pioneer Jacques Lemaire he is fun to hear talk hockey. He basically advocates a total "200-foot" game with constant, fast effort that takes away opposition time and space but also gives them little time to set up attack or defensive structure once you regain the puck.

It's taxing but effective. The Blues were already a good 5-on-5 team before they switched to Hitchcock, but you can see them close down gaps and space with almost robotic regularity. (Whether they can keep it up is another question.)

So anyway, what's the relevance here? The Islanders have too many blueliners who either play safe (Mark Eaton) or don't have the mobility to press (Milan Jurcina).

Mark Streit and Travis Hamonic get around fine, but you wonder about Andrew MacDonald taking maintenance days coming off hip surgery and having what many have thought were some bad outings. And the rest, well, they're not fast. Would the mobile Mark Katic, out with a major shoulder injury since training camp, make a difference in speed and puck movement on the Islanders' third pair right now? Probably.

Ty Wishart is no speedster, but his puck-moving instincts are solid, and perhaps there's something to Katic, Wishart and of course the fleet Jack Hillen being subtracted from last season's second half squad.

They have definitely made an effort to draft mobile puckmovers during this rebuild, but of course none of them outside of Hamonic -- whose strength is more an overall balance and a physical edge rather than pure speed -- are ripe yet. And while the forwards rightly take a lot of grief for failing to generate offense or do the basic things needed to generate more than two goals per game thus far, one can't help thinking the defense's overall inability to acquire and quickly distribute the puck is also an issue.

Blueline speed? It's probably coming eventually. But it wasn't packed in Micheal Haley's luggage.

Islanders Links

• Oh did I mention blueline speed? Scratch that, this is Scott Mayfield's Twitter profile pic.
• Trent Hunter played in that Versus game last night. Good to see him. Here's a "get to know" profile.
• TSN's Darren Dreger is saying Blake Comeau has been shopped. For picks, he claims.
  
• Quotes from David Ullstrom and Jack Capuano on Ullstrom's first NHL game.
• Anders Nilsson talks about his first NHL start, about learning North American angles, and what else he has to learn.
• If you missed it, Snow told Newsday he has no plans for a coaching change. That's as routine as speculation like this though.
• If anything, Capuano's hair would like to send Josh Bailey a message.
• On that note: Chris posted last night about Bailey and other #9 overall picks. Some of those names are frightening.
  
• Where did last year's Islanders go? [McGowan, THW]
• Michael Fornabaio will have a Bridgeport chat today at 1:30. The dude who took out Justin DiBenedetto (Kris Newbury) received a four-game suspension.
• Friedman's 30 Thoughts included several notes about the Islanders and their rebuild.
• Pronman's latest Top 30 Prospects list has Ryan Strome at #4, behind Jonathan Huberdeau. He puts Kirill Kabanov at #9.
  
• Do your unsung NY sports heroes include Frans Nielsen?
• To Semin, or not to Semin?
• The guy who is rumored to buy teams (Senators, Islanders, Leafs) is rumored to want to buy the Devils.

FIG Picks

Leave your FIG (First Islanders Goal) picks in this thread. I'm finally on the board, so I can stop doing my shutout reverse-jinx as it's finally lost its mojo. The preview will be up a little later.