Quotes & Notes After Special Teams Work On Day 3
On Saturday, the New York Islanders focused solely on special teams.
EAST MEADOW, NY — The New York Islanders worked on special teams on Saturday morning, giving us our first look at a Ray Bennett-run power play and a Bob Boughner-run penalty kill.
Here were the power play lines: QB-LW-RW-Bumper-Net
PP 1: DeAngelo-Barzal-Drouin-Horvat-Lee
PP 2: Schaefer-Shabanov-Duclair-Pageau-Palmieri
PP 3: Boqvist-Shabanov-Duclair-Holmstrom-Tsyplakov
Here were the penalty kill lines:
PK 1: Pageau-Holmstrom-Pelech-Pulock
PK 2: Horvat-Palmieri-Romanov-Mayfield
PK 3: Cizikas-MacLean-Schaefer-George
Let’s get to my notes & quotes:
Isaiah George, Calum Ritchie, and Matthew Schaefer were part of the NHL group today. Schaefer saw time quarterbacking the second unit while Ritchie and George played on the penalty kill.
Schaefer is a natural PP QB, and his teammates loved what they saw from him. He’s deceptive and can walk a blue line like the best of them.
It being just day one, there wasn’t a ton of system work put in place. But both units looked more aggressive than we saw a year ago and that’s something head coach Patrick Roy wants to see.
Roy: “That's the plan, especially on the triggers. Like on entries, that was pretty clear. We have a plan. Once the puck gets inside of the zone, we want to be very aggressive on our triggers. If a shot is taken, we want to be aggressive. We had a good video session this morning about how we want to play the PK, but also how aggressive we want to be in those moments.”
The top performer of the day was Jonathan Drouin, who was brought in because of how good he can be on the power play. He is incredibly versatile, and while we normally look at the point man to be a power-play quarterback, there’s no question that he could lead the top unit.
Roy was impressed by Drouin, as well as Schaefer and Shabanov.
Roy: “Are you kidding me? You see him today? It was impressive. You put him in a bumper. You put him on the wall. He's got such a great IQ, even Shabanov on the other side with Schaefer. I'm talking about these guys because I know the others and what I expect from them. Seeing these three coming in, new guys, and adapting and adjusting so fast, it's impressive. I mean, especially — maybe more for Schaefer and Shabananov — Drouin has been doing it, played against us in junior, and then he's doing it in Tampa, Montreal, and Colorado. But having him wearing your jersey, you're like, Okay, I get it.”
Anders Lee said that having Drouin, who knows Bennett from Colorado last year, is invaluable.
Lee: “Dru is such a good asset on that side wall. We flip sides, and we’ve got a quarterback over there that can run the offense, you know what I mean. He’s a QB type-one player. When he gets that puck, we're in a great position on that side as well. And I think Tony up top is able to work both sides, and we can go from there.”
As Lee mentioned, having Tony DeAngelo at the point for a full season will be important, as well as having a healthy Mathew Barzal and Anthony Duclair back. Barzal has looked incredible through the first three days, and if Duclair is limited, he surely isn’t skating like it.
Mathew Barzal: “He’s gonna be huge. Tony was a key part last year at the end, and he's smart. He knows how to run a power play, so hopefully we can get it going.”
Barzal also said that Bennett “seems like he really knows what he’s doing. He’s run some really good power plays, so we are just trying to listen to him and take it all in.”
The power play looks faster, but it’s also more patient, if that makes sense.
Tony DeAngelo: “Well, the most important part for me is the patience and the skill. You watch Drouin get it, and he comes into the zone, whether he's going five miles an hour or 100, he's able to hold the guys on his hip rather than panicking and maybe rimming the puck around the wall. He’s gonna hold on to it. He's gonna wait. Guy might cheat to the wall. He'll come to the middle. He does a good job reading. A guy may cheat to the middle. He's gonna bank it off the back of the wall. And then we're set, right? And then once we get set, I think with the five guys — we have 10 guys with the other unit — we're gonna make plays and we're gonna score goals.”
When it comes to the penalty kill, it was much more structured, much more aggressive.
Scott Mayfield: “It's pretty defined what he wants, what the structure is. It's very structured. Today it's more just learning. It’s getting back into that PK attitude. We just got to have pride in it. We have to make sure we know our jobs and everything. But in the end, it's just going out there having pride, and that's blocking the shot 200 feet clear. Just the little details that we need to do better.”
I thought Alexander Romanov looked more compact and structurally sound on the PK. Mayfield noticed an improvement from No. 28.
Mayfield: “I think the first little bit here, he was a little more sporadic, running around a little bit more and stuff. Now he plays a very smart game. He's very heavy when he comes in, where he needs to be, so that only helps. When we do have so much structure in the unit itself, we all need to be making sure we commit to our job, and I think he does a really good job of that.”
Boughner, a few times, had to tell his PKers to step up a bit more, which we know was an issue last season in knowing when to jump up and when not to.
The players seem to be buying in from jump street.Up next for the Islanders is their first preseason game on Sunday as they’ll host the Philadelphia Flyers at UBS Arena for a 7 PM puck drop.
