Islanders Bits, NHL Power Rankings: 26 Anyone?

Our weekly power rankings and survey of media rankings is below, but first some links and one more look at last night's loss to Montreal. Some interesting quotes in Arthur Staple's game recap at Newsday, with some familiar themes: We made mistakes, but we battled back.

The "battling back" is a nice note from recent games, but still obviously not enough. The article also notes Al Montoya's rougher ride in recent games, though his quote about the game-winner could be read to point, as several fans have, at the defensemen in front of him: "A great shot off the post," Montoya said. "I had no eyes on it." Indeed.

While we focused on Montoya at the risk of over-analysis in our game recap, the quote Staple has from Josh Bailey toward the end is probably most reflective of how things are: "We owe him a lot more than he owes us at this point."

Further Reading for Diversionary Purposes

• If you missed it, there was also a brief state-of-the-season piece in Newsday yesterday with Garth Snow. He said he's not shopping a goalie, and the playoffs are still the imperative: "We've got to get to .500 as quickly as possible and take it from there. ... Our goal is to get to .500 and get ourselves in the playoffs. The group that we have can win on any given night."
• This College Hockey News profile of Corey Trivino's start to the season, from mid-October, reads with a different tone now.
• Eric Hornick's "Skinny" from last night's loss, including: Mike Mottau's 50th NHL assist -- and first point in 34 games.
• Travis Hamonic's major/misconduct for "elbowing" Brooks Orpik was rescinded [FanShot], which keeps him from adding a major to his cumulative tally. Here is how Kerry Fraser would've handled it in-game, had he made the wrong call and realized such.
• Speaking of Hamonic, his first language is French.
• I took JPinVA's "cap mule" term (I think it was his) and ran with it at the SB Nation NHL hub.
• Another day, another failure to deal with the Nassau hub.
  

General Hockey Reading

• Friedman's 30 Thoughts.
• On the Kings coaching vacancy: Scott Burnside thinks Darryl Sutter would represent more of the same but doesn't think John Stevens would represent more of the same.
• The Kings had the same ol', same ol' in their first game post-Terry Murray.
• Speaking of Sutter, holy cow this: Holding a grudge the size of a hay bale, he still hasn’t spoken to his brother Brent who remained on as head coach in Calgary. It speaks to the dysfunctional way in which Sutter ran the Flames as GM.
• Heh. Expect to see this John Tortorella meltdown on HBO | ProHockeyTalk
• The whole Blackhawks-Canucks external trash talk and media bait show is getting rather NBA-ish, isn't it?
  

Media Power Rankings

And now on to the media power rankings survey. Obviously, the 3-0-1 trip did some good in the eyes of the Fractured Estate. All of these do not reflect last night's win er, loss.

Real Power Rankings

Our weekly "real" power rankings are courtesy of Mike, or ICanSeeForIslesAndIsles (who is the one you'll find tirelessly compiling FIG picks in the game thread), conceived and delivers these week after week. They are calculated in true "power ranking" fashion -- i.e. how well teams fare based on their opponents' records.

Explanation of how he does it is in the original post. If you have any questions about it, leave them in comments and he'll likely answer. For reference, last week's post is here.