Islanders Shake Up Lines, Power Play in Nashville

Like every fan — for once, all are in agreement — New York Islanders coach Doug Weight was disappointed with the entire “embarrassing, zero effort” performance in Minnesota, though the primary culprit was and continues to be the power play.

So Friday’s practice in Nashville, the second leg of this two-game road trip, saw a new mix of lines and the promise of Ryan Pulock getting another look.

But we’ll see. A well-heeded warning from Weight via Newsday was that these changes could be “just for practice.”

A conventional reading of the practice lines would have Pulock slotting in while Calvin de Haan sits. Sitting the Carp lad doesn’t make much sense though, so we’ll see what comes Saturday game time.

This is how they lined up Friday:

Jaroslav Halak in goal (duh) and Pulock (!) probably in the lineup, says Doug Weight. New lines at forward were:

For the Twitter-averse, that is:

Lee-Tavares-Bailey
Nelson-Barzal-Eberle
Ladd-Cizikas-Chimera
Kulemin-Beauvillier-Clutterbuck

So then, a switch of Jordan Eberle from the top line with leading scorer Josh Bailey. A move of Brock Nelson to the wing next to Mathew Barzal (and Eberle). Plus two grinder lines with Casey Cizikas between Andrew Ladd and Jason Chimera and Anthony Beauvillier in Cizikas’ familiar spot on the fourth line.

As promised...

...the quite incompetent power play was remixed to look like this:

Again for the Twitter-averse, that’s:

PP1: Lee - Tavares - Bailey - Barzal - Leddy
PP2: Ladd - Nelson - Eberle - Beauvillier - Pulock

Hilariously, many fans on the social mediaz act like it is an inherent disaster that the Islanders would consider four forwards and one defenseman on the power play, never mind that tons of successful teams use such a setup throughout the league.

The defensive pairs in practice included Calvin de Haan and frequent scratch Dennis Seidenberg together.

Charitably, that could just be to look at other mixes. Apocalyptically, that would have de Haan scratched for some reason.

But whatever. We’ll see Saturday night in Music City.