A crossing pass through the center finds an open man, who quickly puts the biscuit in the basket to propel the New York Islanders to yet another victory. Mike Bossy and Bryan Trottier? Nope – it’s Shawn Bates and Mark Parrish.
A defenseman wearing an Islanders jersey intercepts a centering pass and starts a brilliant breakout the other way. Denis Potvin? Hardly – try Adrian Aucoin. A brilliant glove save sends yet another hard-fought game into overtime for the Isles. Billy Smith? No way – you guessed it, it’s Chris Osgood.
Okay, so this year’s Islander squad hardly evokes images of its ancestors from the early 80s. But the comparisons are bound to be made for a team that has started its season by earning points in each of its first ten games.
But this team is more than a fluke. No, Osgood will not keep up his pace of allowing less than two goals per game or turning aside nearly 90 percent of the shots he faces. And it’s quite probable that Parrish will not keep up his goal per game pace.
Aside from that, though, there are very few things going on for this team that are likely to change throughout the season. On paper, the Isles are one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. And it is very easy to see how they went about building such a skilled squad.
First off, the Isles pulled off a bold move on draft day, trading away the second pick (which turned out to be future star Jason Spezza) in a deal that brought former holdout and crybaby supreme Alexei Yashin in from Ottawa. Then, they went and brought in another former holdout in the person of Michael Peca, who despite his absence from the NHL last year, is still one of the best two-way centers in the game. Not only that, but the team took the initiative to sign both players to contracts that will keep them in town until at least 2006 if desired.
The next move was to bring in Bates, who was shown no interest by king of the penny pinchers, Jeremy Jacobs. After that, the Isles sured up a couple of their current young players in Mariusz Czerkawski and Brad Isbister. They then signed Aucoin to a one-year deal, and then made one final move – picking up Osgood in the expansion draft.
What it all adds up to is a 9-0-1-1 start that has drawn much attention, but has gone as a sideshow in the upside-down NHL. But unlike most of the other upstart teams, the Isles are sitting pretty in the top-heavy Eastern Conference. Not to mention the fact that they have inked the majority of their talent for a long time.
The Islanders are almost as good from top to bottom as any other team in the East. Aside from the forwards already mentioned, they also have former UNH star Jason Krog and the ever-underachieving Oleg Kvasha. The one weakness of the forward core may be the fact that the majority of the talent is still pretty young, and that inexperience could haunt the team.
On D, the Isles have a bunch of talents who have as of yet not panned out in their NHL careers. Kenny Jonsson and Roman Hamrlik, along with veteran Kevin Haller, provide the squad with a tremendous amount of talent in front of Osgood, who is outperforming all of the expectations put on him.
Will this team go the season without a regulation loss? Of course not. Will it make the playoffs? In the East, it’s certainly possible. The question is, can it continue to bring forth the cohesion that they have shown in the first stanza of their 2001-02 campaign?
In my opinion, there is no reason to believe they won’t.
