Islanders Gameday News/Game 65 Thread: Quiet deadline day for the Isles, but they made their moves

The trade deadline has come and gone, and the New York Islanders are no different than we left them on Friday morning. And that’s fine; there was probably no one out available worth trading for, although I probably would have given Chuck Fletcher the fourth-rounder he wanted for half of James van Riemsdyk’s contract. But I’m more comfortable with Sebastian Aho on defense than perhaps some other folks.

Very little happened yesterday, primarily because most of the business got done early. This was more like a trade deadline week, or two weeks, or really a month. Lou Lamoriello got the ball rolling early by trading for Bo Horvat at the end of January, and everyone followed along. We’ll see if that pattern holds or if this was a one-off.

Now, bright and early, the Islanders finally return to game action, hosting the Detroit Red Wings at 12:30 p.m. The Wings started selling, effectively taking themselves out of the race. But they’re not dead yet, and the Islanders need every point and regulation win they can get, so a regulation win today is still critical.

This post will also serve as the game thread since the game is in like two and a half hours. Brunch hockey, folks.

FIGs go here.

Islanders News

• A preview of today’s game.
• They credit their “structure” for their recent resurgence, and I agree. They have looked Trotzian over the last few weeks, and that’s how they win. [NY Post]
• It was a quiet day for the Islanders, but to say that they did nothing at the deadline is to ignore the Bo Horvat and Pierre Engvall deals. [Newsday]
• And overall, they did well, even though they didn’t get that defenseman. [NY Post]
• Post-deadline, Kevin Kurz takes stock of the Islanders: The Bo Horvat deal is paying early dividends and aging well already, but he says the defensive depth could have improved. [The Athletic]
• Ilya Sorokin’s father has made his first trip to the U.S. to see his son play NHL hockey! [amNY]
• Friend of the blog Joe Buono of Isles Fix wrote an A to Z Islanders history book. This is awesome. [Islanders]

Trades and Elsewhere

Last night’s NHL scores include nothing relevant to our playoff race.

• The Wild were one of the more active teams yesterday, sending out Jordan Greenway to the Sabres, replacing him with Oskar Sundqvist from the Red Wings, and then sneaking in a deal for John Klingberg from the Ducks at the last minute. [NHL]
• The Flames and Coyotes made a trade in which they swapped the Ritchie brothers, marking the first time in NHL history that two brothers were traded for one another. [NHL]
• The Jets never make big moves, only nipping and tucking around the edges, and they added Russian Lee Stempniak: Vladislav Namestnikov. [NHL]
• The Penguins made a move for another depth defenseman, clearing out Brock McGinn’s contract to acquire Dmitry Kulikov. [NHL]
• But the fanboy beat writers are calling for GM Ron Hextall’s head, saying he’s running them into the ground. [The Athletic]
• In case we missed a trade throughout this season, here’s the full tracker for the season. [NHL Trade Tracker]
• On the 32 Thoughts podcast wrapping it all up, Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek talk about the parameters of the J.T. Miller deal that the Canucks and Penguins theorized about and the fact that a proposed JvR-to-Detroit (for some reason) fell apart because Detroit couldn’t make another move. Philly was just weirdly inactive for a bad team with a couple of UFAs, probably because they waited too long.
• Alex Nylander, William’s younger brother, is apparently in the Penguins’ organization and ready to claim a role. [TribLIVE]
• On 16 Stats, Dom L. talks about the Bruins’ historical season, Brent Burns’ resurgence, and what Jakob Chychrun does for the Senators. [The Athletic]