If you’re looking for Alexei Yashin, you can probably find him in the stick room.
Day after day, there’s Yashin, sawing, shaving and putting a heat gun to his magic wands, sculpting his Ultra-Lite Eastons into weapons of mass destruction.
Through an up-and-down first 20 games of the season, Yashin has put those sticks to good work, leading the Islanders (12-5-2-1) with 22 points on 12 goals and 10 assists. On pace to score 50 goals this season, Yashin would be the first Islander to accomplish that feat since Pierre Turgeon lit the lamp 58 times for the 1992-93 team.
The most skilled centerman to play on Long Island since Turgeon was traded in 1995, Yashin is coming off a two-goal game – his third of the season – in the 3-2 win at Dallas Monday night.
The pair of goals – two atomic, first-period slap shots – came on the power play, with Yashin camped out at the top of the left circle, a spot head coach Peter Laviolette knows is where he must have his most lethal sniper stationed. On the power play, Yashin has thrived opposite the Isles’ other long-distance dialer, Roman Hamrlik.
“He’s got his spot,” Laviolette said after the Dallas game. “We want to work him there. Hammer and Yash have two big guns out there.”
So far, seven of Yashin’s 12 goals have come on the extra-man unit, but the $90-million man’s presence is felt every time he touches down on the ice, in any situation. A skater as tough as the winters in his native Russia, Yashin has the power to blow through defenders and the speed to stick-handle his way out of a phone booth.
Tonight, Yashin will look to continue leading these Islanders out of the funk they broke Monday night when Patrick Roy and the Avalanche storm into the Coliseum for the second meeting beween the two in less than a week.
Friday night, Roy blanked the Isles in a 1-0 win in Colorado in building a career-best three-game shutout streak that ended in a flurry of Ranger goals at the Garden last night. Roy silenced the Devils, Isles and Wild the last three before the Rangers humiliated him with five goals in 28 minutes.
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D Radek Martinek (left knee ligament) began practicing this week and may return to action this weekend . . . LW Oleg Kvasha (shoulder) is listed as day-to-day.
