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Bailsember: Islanders Josh Bailey named NHL’s Second Star of the Month

Try to save some awards for the rest of the league.

By Dan Saraceni
Anaheim Ducks v New York Islanders
Who’s a star now, bruh?
Photo by Mike Stobe/NHLI via Getty Images

This is getting ridiculous now. I’m running out of things to write in these articles, that are basically just regurgitating what people from either the NHL or the Islanders have already written. Like, why even bother?

But it’s another week and another honor for Islanders winger Josh Bailey, who was named the NHL’s Second Star of the Month for December after leading the league with seven goals and 15 assists in 22 games. He’s already been named a Star of the Week twice this season.

Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask, who’s in Brooklyn tonight to play the Islanders, was the first star and Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov, who only had eight goals and 12 assists in December, was third.

I mean, what else am I going to say? That Bailey has survived years of inconsistency to finally produce at a rate exponentially higher than his career norms almost 10 years after being drafted in the first round? That he, Anders Lee and John Tavares are one of the NHL’s most potent offensive units despite receiving not a fraction of the kind of league-wide notoriety some other lines get? That’s he’s a UFA at the end of the season and is proving to be nearly as important a player to re-sign as Tavares is? That this team’s first and second lines are nearly enough to counteract the fact they they give up goals by the half dozen on a nightly basis?

Note I said, “nearly.” Here’s Bailey scoring the Islanders’ lone goal in a New Year’s Eve pounding in Denver. The goal kept his current scoring streak alive at 11 games.

Wow. Listen to the roar of the crowd...

You know all that flowery stuff already. It’s old news. Geez, it even seems like Bailey’s run out of things to say about all these accolades:

Modesty and joking aside, Bailey has 12 goals and 38 assists for 50 points this season. He’s currently tied for the league lead in assists with Philadelphia’s Jake Voracek and is six points behind Kucherov for the league lead in points overall.

He might need to get six tonight for the Islanders to have a chance at beating Rask and the red-hot Bruins.

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