The Islanders begin a brief two-game road trip as they head to Denver to face the Avalanche. New York's 10-game point streak ended Tuesday with a rough 5-1 loss at the hands of the Florida Panthers. The Isles secured 18 out of a possible 20 points during that span.
Head coach Jack Capuano juggled the lines during Tuesday's game. The first line of John Tavares, Kyle Okposo and Brock Nelson was broken up. Tavares skated with Ryan Strome and Josh Bailey, while Okposo played with Nelson and Frans Nielsen. Anders Lee, who hasn't scored a goal in 11 games replaced Strome on the third line. As far as the defensemen, we saw Johnny Boychuk reunited with Nick Leddy. Since it is Cappy's MO to blow things up following a bad loss I would expect line changes. I would go back to the opening night's lines. Lee needs to get going. Reunited him with Tavares might be the spark that both players need.
My projected lines Ryan Strome-John Tavares-Anders Lee Josh Bailey-Frans Nielsen-Kyle Okposo Nikolay Kulemin-Mikhail Grabovski-Brock Nelson Matt Martin-Casey Cikizas-Cal Clutterbuck
Thomas Greiss will get the start tonight. Greiss is 9-3-2 with a 2.03 GAA and a 2.16 save percentage. Both put him in the top five of the league. Jaroslav Halak had a stinker on Tuesday. He allowed 4 goals on 16 shots. The most brutal, Aaron Ekblad's goal twenty seconds after Nelson's goal cut the lead to one. The beauty of this season, as opposed to last season and seasons past is that they have confidence to start their backup goalie in a non back-to-back situation.
The Isles look to sweep the season series vs the Avalanche for the first time since 2010-11 when Dwayne Roloson and Kevin Poulin got the wins. Milan Jurcina and Jeremy Colliton both had a pair of goals. New York owns the Western Conference this season going an Eastern Conference-best 10-2-1. Colorado has been playing well of late going 7-3-0 in their last ten games.