Atlanta Thrashers At New York Islanders: The Return Of The Schremp

Rob Schremp'll start at center tonight - Ramsay hopes that he has the desire to show up his old team a bit, so who knows - maybe it'll spread? Chris Mason's in goal, which strikes me as odd. Considering that Mason is far more familiar with Vancouver than Pavelec is, and since Pavs has played better against the Islanders than Mason, wouldn't it make sense to start Mason tomorrow night?

Who am I to question these things? We've almost hit the point in the season where it's moot anyway.

Anywho, happy birthday Ron Hainsey. Hainsey's apparently stolen Andrew Ladd's mojo, as he has six points in the past six games. Ladd's a -7 in his last three.

The Islanders have been playing some really solid hockey as of late. Their kids're showing what they can do, their solid players are stepping up, and they very well might not be horrible next season. Heck, they haven't been horrible the second half of this one. An Isles win tonight will tie them with the Thrashers in points, so these guys aren't an easy win anymore.

Swing by Lighthouse Hockey and say hi to Dom and the nice folks over there if you'd like. I'd like to see a win tonight, but mostly, I'd just like to not see us allow eight goals. Here's the NHL.com preview:

	STATS
72	GP	74
30	W	29
30	L	33
12	OT	12
72	P	70
0.500	P%	0.473
2.75	G/G	2.76
3.21	GA/G	3.11
19.1	PP%	17.7
76.2	PK%	82.6
31.5	S/G	29.1
32.9	SA/G	32.2
49.1	FO%	50.2

That face-off percentage has been slowly dropping all season long... perhaps that's been contributing to the GA/G climbing steadily upward.