00:00Six games into the season, the Islanders have made a major coaching change to their staff.
00:05As you guys know, goalie coach Piero Greco was fired in hopes to help fix a disjointed defense.
00:11So let's talk all things Owls, and of course, we're going to preview tonight's Red Wings game
00:15with our Islanders beat writer for the post, Ethan Sears.
00:19Ethan, what's up, man? How you doing? Appreciate you hopping on with us.
00:23Let's get straight into this goalie coaching change news.
00:28Team GM and EVP Matthew Darsh said that it was the right timing to have a reset with our goalies.
00:37If the right time to have a reset is six games into the season,
00:42then there must have been some major problems behind the scenes that we don't know about.
00:46So from what you know, do you think it's too soon of a decision,
00:50or do you think the reset was a great call?
00:53Well, Brandon, first of all, thanks for having me. I always appreciate it.
00:57Time is ultimately going to tell if this was the right move to fire Piero Greco and replace him with Sergei Nelmovs.
01:06But, Brandon, you're absolutely right to point out that the timing here is kind of bizarre.
01:12Now, to be totally fair, Elias Sorokin has absolutely not looked like himself,
01:18ironically, with the exception of his last start the other night on Tuesday.
01:22And we saw last week Patrick Waugh stayed on the ice after a morning skate to work with him,
01:28kind of breaking his own rule to not work with the goalies.
01:33And that's a little bit of a red flag in retrospect.
01:36He said at the time he didn't work with Sorokin on anything technical.
01:41It was just sort of mental stuff.
01:43Sorokin said yesterday it was both.
01:45So, there's a little bit of contradiction there.
01:49Nelmovs has a history with Sorokin.
01:52They worked together in the KHL when Sorokin was at CSKA Moscow.
01:57He's been Sorokin's personal coach.
01:59He was hired to work for the Islanders in Bridgeport last year,
02:04obviously, because of that connection.
02:06So, there's some sense to it.
02:08But all that being said, there's no getting around that the timing here is, it's just weird.
02:15If you were going to do this anyway, it doesn't make much sense to have done it over the summer.
02:21If the leash was just a few, you know, five bad starts, basically, or really four bad starts,
02:29then it doesn't really, again, doesn't really make much sense to have not done it over the summer.
02:34So, this is a really small sample size to have done something like this on.
02:39And we're going to have to wait and see how it plays out.
02:42But, yeah, I think that, you know, we're going to look back on this as either a really smart,
02:47prescient decision and proactive or something that was pretty overreactive.
02:52And time is going to tell.
02:54Yeah, you're hoping that we look back at the decision and it created some sort of spark to the defense
03:00that, as you put in your article, has been kind of disjointed to start the season.
03:06And you spoke with Ryan Pullock after practice yesterday about rewiring the defense.
03:11And he said they're working on being more reactionary.
03:14How's this rewire going to help make the defense better and more efficient?
03:18Yeah, so what Ryan Pullock was kind of talking about there was that the Islanders have made some tweaks
03:24to their system in the defensive zone.
03:26And players are still getting used to that.
03:28They're still hesitating a little bit on what decisions they're supposed to make,
03:32where they're supposed to go.
03:33And obviously, same thing as in any sport, you want to be going off instinct.
03:38You don't want to be thinking about what you have to do and when you have to do it.
03:42So, in theory, the idea behind the system changes, at least as I understand it,
03:47is to be a little bit more aggressive, to swarm the puck a little more,
03:51presumably to force more turnovers.
03:53That's obviously not how it's playing out right now.
03:55The Islanders have given up a ton of chances, which is actually another part of the goaltending problem.
04:02And it's not only the system, to be fair.
04:05They're turning pucks over.
04:06They're losing battles.
04:08There's a lot of stuff that's gone into it.
04:10So, you know, I think that's a big piece of it, like Ryan Pulak said,
04:15is just getting out of the mode of thinking and being more instinctual, being more reactionary.
04:21And that's just going to come with time and with sort of having that system ingrained a little more.
04:28And if they can get that situation settled, then I believe that the Islanders can be,
04:34will have a lot more success than what they're having.
04:37Because when we flip things and talk about the offensive side of things,
04:42they're winning some pretty high-scoring, wide-open games.
04:45So what do you think that they need to keep doing, or I guess maybe even do even better,
04:49to sustain the success they're having early in the season?
04:53Yeah, I mean, like you said, the offense has really been a strength so far.
04:57It's kind of the opposite from the conversation we've had about the Islanders for, I don't know,
05:02the last five, six, seven years, really.
05:05The power play has taken a major step forward.
05:08We're going to talk about Matthew Schaefer here in a minute, but he's played a huge role.
05:12The way the top two lines have been constructed, it was a little bit of a risk at the time,
05:18I thought, to put Emil Heinemann in the top six.
05:20He hasn't really done that before.
05:21And that's turned out to be a really smart move from Patrick Waugh.
05:25I think the Islanders would probably like to see a little more secondary scoring.
05:29Their fourth line hasn't been great.
05:32It's been a little surprising to me that Simon Holmstrom hasn't done much offensively
05:36after he scored 20 goals last year.
05:38But that being said, the Islanders don't really have much to worry about offensively right now.
05:42If they can keep doing what they're doing and try to fix up their defense,
05:47they're going to be in a pretty good spot.
05:49All right, let's talk about the main attraction now because you've got all of Canada in love with you
05:54because you put out the take that Matthew Schaefer is a possible Olympic contender for Team Canada.
06:00He's only six games into his pro career, and this kid is what I call the Jackson Dart of the Islanders.
06:07How impressive has he been, and what would he have to keep doing
06:11to actually stay in that conversation of playing for Team Canada?
06:15Yeah, so Brandon, I think it's important to make clear it's very unlikely that Matthew Schaefer goes to Milan for Team Canada.
06:26Oh, you got us all hyped.
06:27But what I wrote is that I think the biggest reason that it's unlikely
06:38is that it's unlikely that Matthew Schaefer keeps playing the way he is playing.
06:46What he has done through six games, I mean, it's really hard to overstate how impressive it's been.
06:57He's, I think he's still the second leading scorer defensively in the league.
07:04He's averaging over 20 minutes.
07:06He hasn't really made many mistakes.
07:09He has kind of supercharged the Islanders and the fan base.
07:15And I think everybody sort of assumes, like you would with any 18-year-old young player,
07:22that that just can't keep up because he's 18 years old, right?
07:27It's a small sample.
07:30Of course, there are going to be growing pains.
07:32There are going to be mistakes.
07:33There are going to be moments where he looks young and the season's going to wear on him.
07:38And that's not at all a knock on Matthew Schaefer.
07:40That's just sort of how players develop.
07:45If he does somehow stay at or near this level, though,
07:50I don't really see how it could not turn into a conversation amongst Team Canada's brass.
07:57You know, they had five left side D at their orientation camp this summer who were all the same five guys who played for them at the Four Nations face-off last year.
08:09And right now, if you have to guess, I think most people would probably project that three or four guys from that group will be on the Olympic team.
08:17But you could have injuries.
08:19You could obviously have performance change that.
08:21Matthew Schaefer is far from the only guy who could work his way into the equation.
08:27And right now, it's a very small sample size.
08:31It's six games.
08:32You don't want to kind of get out over your skis.
08:35And I saw Pierre Lebrun today on TSN noted, and it was smart of him to note, that Canada, their history in the Olympics is not to take young guys like this.
08:47They didn't take Sidney Crosby to the 2006 games.
08:50They took Drew Doughty in 2010, but he was 20 years old.
08:54Schaefer is 18 right now.
08:56So those are all really important caveats.
08:59And it is very unlikely that Matthew Schaefer is on the Olympic team.
09:03But again, if he is able to do this every night, and you get to that deadline for rosters in December, and that's what you're seeing from him,
09:14I just don't see how you could possibly avoid having the conversation if you're in Team Canada, unlikely as it is that we get that far.
09:23Hey, I'm all about conversations.
09:25This is what we do for a living.
09:26And again, this kid has been the spark.
09:30He's been the most exciting, I guess, element or piece or person to watch on this Islanders team.
09:36And that's no disrespect to the 19-plus-year-olds that are on the team.
09:41But let's get into tonight because we got a big one here at UBS Arena tonight.
09:46The Red Wings are coming to town.
09:48The Isles have a chance to go over .500 with the win.
09:50And you think a win against a quality team like Detroit could be what's needed to spark this team early in the season?
10:01Well, I think not just a win.
10:03The Islanders have won three in a row.
10:06And to me, what's interesting is that they've done that, and they haven't really looked that good doing it.
10:12You know, we've talked about the defense hasn't been great.
10:14We're having this conversation about they just fired their goalie coach.
10:17Which, you wouldn't really think that they've won three in a row from the conversation around this team right now.
10:24So to me, it's if they can win while playing a sound defensive game, win battles, not let up as many chances, you know, odd man rushes, not turn pucks over quite as much.
10:39And play sort of a controlled game that doesn't really turn into a track meet like we've been seeing.
10:48You know, it's great that the Islanders can stay in those games and win those games.
10:52Whereas a few years ago, you probably wouldn't have said that.
10:56But I think everybody, you know, players, Patrick Waugh, management, whoever else around the Islanders would agree that that's not how they want to win games.
11:11It's probably not a very sustainable way of winning games.
11:15And, you know, at some point here, they're going to have to figure out a way to shore up their defense and win that way, too.
11:25All right. Big one tonight at UBS Arena.
11:29Ethan, appreciate you hopping on with us, my man.
Be the first to comment