The Islanders saw it as a good thing that on Wednesday they were able to send 19-year-old defenseman Griffin Reinhart back to his junior team of the WHL, less a result of his play and more an aftereffect of organizational depth.
“At 19, Griff came into training camp and made the team,” general manager Garth Snow told The Post. “Our D has just stayed healthy and played well. We want him to go back and play games, learn to dominate the game and continue to be a leader on his team.”
Reinhart was the No. 4 overall pick in the 2012 draft, and with skating ability, poise and vision all built into his 6-foot-4 frame, he impressed during the exhibition schedule and practices. But the Islanders have taken five out of a possible six points to open the season, all while Reinhart was a healthy scratch.
Now, as they prepare to travel to Chicago to take on the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks on Friday night, they thought Reinhart would be best served back with the Edmonton Oil Kings. He could not go to AHL Bridgeport because of his age, though he could have played up to nine games with the Islanders before returning to juniors.
“It was a tough decision because he played so well,” Snow said. “One of our strengths as an organization is our depth at D, and he is a big part of that.”
Coach Jack Capuano has had the luxury of that depth, which includes rookie Matt Donovan, who played in all three games and scored his first career goal in Tuesday’s 6-1 win over the Coyotes. Yet the difference is Donovan, 23, played the past two years in the AHL, last season leading the league in scoring for defensemen.
“It’s just a situation for him where if [Reinhart] is not going to get the minutes here and not going to get in the lineup as frequently as we’d like him to, for his development, it’s best that he goes back to junior,” Capuano said after Wednesday’s practice. “Right now, our D is playing pretty good, and I think Griff would be the first to tell you that. We have a solid D. We still have guys that aren’t in the lineup that we want to get in the lineup. The way it is right now, and the way our schedule is, we just thought it’d be best for him.”
On Tuesday, Reinhart told The Post he didn’t think he could learn too much more from juniors, but that tune must have been toned down a bit. Snow and Capuano sat down with Reinhart on Wednesday morning to tell him the news, and it went amicably.
“He took it like a professional,” Snow said. “Griff is going to come back and be a good player for us down the road.”
The move opens a necessary roster spot for forward Cal Clutterbuck, who has practiced with the team for a week and is ready to return from a leg laceration suffered in the first preseason game. Clutterbuck was taken off injured reserve on Wednesday, and is expected to make his Islanders debut on Friday.
The question now for Capuano will be whom Clutterbuck replaces in the lineup. For two practices in a row, he skated as an extra on the third line with Brock Nelson, Peter Regin and Pierre-Marc Bouchard. That line played its best game of the season on Tuesday, with Regin scoring his first goal as an Islander and the rookie Nelson getting his career first point by assisting on Regin’s goal.
When asked whether Clutterbuck could replace someone on that line, Capuano said, “There’s a good chance it will be on that line, but we just don’t know right now who will come out.
“I have some thoughts about it,” he continued. “I haven’t made a final decision yet. It’s tough decision. We have some guys that are playing real well, we have other guys that need to pick it up. That’s a decision that we’ll ponder over the next 24 hours.”
When asked whether he considers any locker-room repercussion that might come with sitting a veteran – specifically Bouchard – Capuano gawked.
“No, no,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say Bouchard, but we’ve sat other guys in the past. As coaches, we have to hold guys accountable. It doesn’t matter who you are, if we have this conversation as coaches to players and things don’t change, you might have to watch a game.
“It’s always a difficult decision, making lineup changes, because guys want to play. But again, we’ll see over the next day what we decide.”
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It seems decided that backup goalie Kevin Poulin will play one of the back-to-back games over the weekend, probably Saturday night in Nashville. Starter Evgeni Nabokov has been outstanding in playing the first three games, the first two of which were back-to-back.
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Forward Frans Nielsen was fined $5,000 for a third-period slash to the Coyotes’ Martin Hanzal.