TORONTO – Darkness has fallen on the Islanders.
If this season were a movie, tonight would begin the scene where the Isles, their uniforms tattered and torn, slap in the remaining rounds of ammunition they have before the big battle at the end.
For the Islanders, these last 15 games are their last stand at Wounded Knee, their shootout at the OK Corral.
Except not everything’s OK. The Isles are in the most critical portion of their season, following Saturday night’s forgettable performance in a 4-3 loss in Ottawa (allowing the Devils to come within two points of them) and a locked-door meeting that lasted over an hour. As a result, the team was fined an undisclosed amount by the NHL for not opening their door to the media within 10 minutes following the game.
“Every team goes through it,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “Ottawa just went through it. They just went through exactly what we went through. They worked their way out of it.”
Mark Parrish said the meeting was a good thing for the team, specifically the emergence of leaders in the room that caught the attention of players who had started to tune out the same voices doing all the talking.
“Sometimes guys go tone deaf,” Parrish said. “It kinda goes in one ear and out the next.”
Then there is today’s trade deadline, which may have made yesterday’s session the last time the Islanders practiced with all their players intact before a deal is made and they possibly lose one or two. Brad Isbister’s name has been the most popular among the rumors circulating, the latest scenario having he and Dave Scatchard going to Edmonton for Tom Poti and possibly Anson Carter.
“I don’t think about it,” Isbister said. “It’s out of my control. You hear a lot of stuff, but you get used to it.”
There is also renewed talk of Darius Kasparaitis coming back to the Isles, as the Penguins are clearly out of the playoffs and committed to moving the human wrecking machine before he becomes a free agent this summer.
“I think if everybody didn’t understand what they had to do before, they definitely do now,” Parrish said of the player meetings. “Each guy has to take his game to the next level.”
No matter who’s on the team after 3 p.m. today.
So yesterday the Islanders conducted one of their most intense practices since training camp, a day before tonight’s game against the Leafs here. It was a spirited session that lasted longer than usual practices, complete with full-ice drills for almost two hours and included some barking from Laviolette when Isbister, chewing his chinstrap, shouted across the rink for instructions to be repeated over the coach, who was still talking.
“Shut the [bleep] up,” Laviolette yelled back.
Fun time is over, indeed.
