Isles at Edmonton Pregame

The Isles are up in balmy Siberia Edmonton Alberta, Canada to take on the Oilers. This is a night of firsts, first time former first rounder Robert Nilsson would see his old team (he is a healthy scratch tonight), first time that Mike Comrie visits his old team, as the same for Marc-Andre Bergeron. Also out tonight for the Oilers is former Islander Raffi Torres, who is out after getting season ending knee surgery (torn ACL) – which is fresh from Corey Witt’s blog .

This is the Islanders 41st game, which is the exact midway point of the season. The Oilers won in a shootout over the Rangers on Saturday night and have won two of their last three games; they currently sit seven points out of eight place in the Western Conference.

Sometimes a battling a western conference team who is currently out of the playoff race, is dangerous – as they want to get every point they can in order to get back in the mix.

The Islanders really need to take advantage of this road trip and take points from opponents out of their conference and division, as they have been doing well against opponents in their division.

A bit off topic, I happened to meet a blogger who covers the Rangers last night – who knew a night out with the fiancée and her co-workers would lead me to a fellow blogger? I guess as likely as a run in with Satan at Home Depot!

We spoke about hockey for a better part of the night, after both being bored out of our minds listening to Cablevision work talk and gossip. He was a very knowledgeable fan/blogger who also happens to be a season ticket holder – sounds familiar right? It’s good to hear a view from a rival’s fan, so check out Dan’s site – Pucks on Broadway.

Dan also has a column over at Outside the Garden and is an intern for the Maven, aka Stan Fischler . Once he told me that, we shared stories about what it was like being behind the scenes – and both came to a similar conclusion, win or lose we love being in the locker room.

There is a bunch more we discussed that I am trying to remember, I am 99% sure that Dan writes for another blog as well. When I figure it out, I will post up the url.