From the official site's coverage of former Atlanta Thrashers captain Steve Staios' 1000th NHL game:
"On a personal level I’m very thankful that he was here this year," stall-mate Travis Hamonic said. "He’s never hesitant to pull me aside and give me some constructive advice and I’m always happy to hear it because the guy’s played 1,000 games in the NHL. That’s a pretty special feat and I’m happy to be sharing this moment with him."
Meanwhile, the weekly power rankings are coming to a close, not with a bang but nor a winner:
Survey of Media Power Rankings
Here is the weekly roundup of media rankings and commentary. Links take you to the overall rankings. Commentary is what specifically was penned about the Isles.
Apparently some of you located something nice Burnside said about the Isles. Consider this the backhand.
Outlet | Rank | Last Week | Their Commentary |
CBSSports | 23 | 25 |
Two impressive performances to beat the Penguins in back-to-back games, both by scores of 5-3. |
THN (Proteau) |
25 | 26 |
Matt Moulson has gotten much praise for recording his third straight 30-goal season, but he's also improved his assist total by 50 percent from last season (22 to 33 this year). |
ESPN (Burnside) |
26 | 27 | The Isles did knock off Pittsburgh twice in one week, which is about as good as it gets for this sad-sack franchise. |
Sportsnet | 27 | 25 | The Isles’ surprising two-game sweep of the Penguins must’ve left them exhausted, as they dropped games to Boston and Ottawa by a score of 11-4. |
TSN (Cullen) |
24 | 24 | The Islanders' leading scorer in March (tied with John Tavares, but work with me here)? Josh Bailey, who had 16 points in 15 games. As I put out to the Twitterverse last week, is it a sign of 22-year-old Bailey turning the corner in his development, or is this fool's gold at the end of the season? Fool's gold had the decided edge among responses. |
Fox | 28 |
27 | The Isles are bad; they’re just not consistently bad enough to slide into last in the power rankings, even when they put together embarrassing efforts such as Sunday’s loss to Ottawa. This was not the rookie year Nino Niederreiter (51 GP, 1 G, 0 A, minus-26) had hoped for. |
Average |
25.5 |
25.6 |
The Islanders are bad at winning and bad at tanking. |
For reference, here is last week's power rankings post.
Real Power Rankings
And now on to our weekly "real" power rankings courtesy of Mike, or ICanSeeForIslesAndIsles (who is the one you'll find tirelessly compiling FIG picks in the game thread), who 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.
These tables are through Monday's games, but you know the Isles' standing has not and will not change much in this painfully consistent season:
W | L | OTL | Pts | Pct | PWR | ||
1 | Unpresidential, honestly | 50 | 22 | 7 | 107 | 0.677 | 2062 |
2 | St. Louis | 48 | 21 | 10 | 106 | 0.671 | 2037 |
3 | Vancouver | 49 | 21 | 9 | 107 | 0.677 | 2030 |
4 | Pittsburgh | 48 | 25 | 6 | 102 | 0.646 | 1965 |
5 | Philadelphia | 46 | 24 | 9 | 101 | 0.639 | 1932 |
6 | Detroit | 47 | 27 | 5 | 99 | 0.627 | 1914 |
7 | Nashville | 45 | 26 | 8 | 98 | 0.620 | 1885 |
8 | Boston | 47 | 28 | 4 | 98 | 0.620 | 1865 |
9 | Chicago | 44 | 26 | 10 | 98 | 0.613 | 1863 |
10 | New Jersey | 45 | 28 | 6 | 96 | 0.608 | 1846 |
11 | Los Angeles | 40 | 27 | 13 | 93 | 0.581 | 1794 |
12 | Phoenix | 39 | 27 | 13 | 91 | 0.576 | 1772 |
13 | Ottawa | 41 | 28 | 10 | 92 | 0.582 | 1754 |
14 | San Jose | 40 | 29 | 10 | 90 | 0.570 | 1732 |
15 | Florida | 37 | 25 | 17 | 91 | 0.576 | 1725 |
16 | Dallas | 42 | 32 | 5 | 89 | 0.563 | 1688 |
17 | Colorado | 41 | 33 | 6 | 88 | 0.550 | 1681 |
18 | Washington | 40 | 32 | 8 | 88 | 0.550 | 1658 |
19 | Buffalo | 38 | 31 | 10 | 86 | 0.544 | 1637 |
20 | Calgary | 35 | 29 | 16 | 86 | 0.538 | 1623 |
21 | Tampa Bay | 37 | 35 | 7 | 81 | 0.513 | 1559 |
22 | Winnipeg | 36 | 34 | 9 | 81 | 0.513 | 1551 |
23 | Minnesota | 34 | 35 | 10 | 78 | 0.494 | 1527 |
24 | Carolina | 31 | 32 | 16 | 78 | 0.494 | 1513 |
25 | Anaheim | 33 | 35 | 11 | 77 | 0.487 | 1508 |
26 | NY Islanders | 33 | 35 | 11 | 77 | 0.487 | 1501 |
27 | Toronto | 34 | 36 | 9 | 77 | 0.487 | 1474 |
28 | Montreal | 29 | 35 | 15 | 73 | 0.462 | 1436 |
29 | Edmonton | 32 | 39 | 9 | 73 | 0.456 | 1410 |
30 | Columbus | 27 | 45 | 7 | 61 | 0.386 | 1203 |