Jack Capuano has heard enough about rebuilding, enough about the process, and enough of the other phrases that sugarcoat losses.
Tonight, the Islanders and their head coach will open the season against the Panthers at the Coliseum, and it’s a season of promise like none in the past five years.
“From all of our staff, you can really see the determination in our guys,” Capuano said yesterday. “You can see it in their effort, how much they want this thing to be successful. You can see it in their eyes.”
When Capuano took over on Nov. 15 last season, he inherited a team that had just lost 10 straight games and was again becoming the butt of jokes around the NHL — the same jokes the franchise has heard since occupying the bottom of the Atlantic Division in 2007.
But Capuano turned them around, got them to start playing hard, aggressive, loose hockey, and they went 25-21-8 over the final 54 games. And that was a team decimated with injuries, losing a total of 579 man games, over 100 more than the next closest team.
“I don’t even want to talk about injuries,” Capuano said last week.
The good news is the Islanders team taking the ice tonight is almost fully healthy. For the first time in a long time that includes franchise goalie Rick DiPietro.
Capuano has made it a point not to declare his starting goalie until the morning of the game, but from all his intonations during training camp, the signs are pointing directly at DiPietro.
“We feel really good about the guys we have,” Capuano said, referring to the other two goalies on the roster, Evgeni Nabokov and Al Montoya, in addition to DiPietro.
“We have three guys that can win us hockey games,” Capuano said. “We’re going to go with the guy that we think gives us the best chance to win that night.”
No matter who gets the call tonight, the Islanders and Capuano don’t want winning to continue to be something to smile at from a distance.