Islanders coach Scott Gordon has made it clear that the rest of this dismal season will be about the future and the development of the team’s younger players.
At the season’s halfway point, that focus only figures to get bigger starting tonight when the Isles host the Rangers at Nassau Coliseum.
“Realistically, my biggest thing is to make sure our younger players continue to develop and get better every day,” Gordon said. “Right now, that’s going to be the gauge for me for how successful we are.”
They can’t be any less successful than they’ve been lately. The Isles just returned from a winless four-game road trip and have won only two games since the beginning of December.
“Not that we didn’t want that progress in the first half, but certainly there was an element of allowing the veteran players to run with it,” Gordon said. “If we were in a situation where we were contending for a playoff spot, maybe we’d hold back our younger players a little bit longer. But the fact that we’re in the situation we are in, we’re going to have our younger players run with it.”
Injured veteran Doug Weight has already expressed displeasure about the possibility of having a reduced role and yesterday Bill Guerin, the captain, said he wasn’t pleased with how things were going but could see why Gordon and Co. would come to that decision.
“It’s frustrating, but you deal with it,” Guerin said. “He’s got to do what he feels he has to do or what he wants to do. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
But he didn’t criticize the move.
“I understand it well,” Guerin said. “But it’s their decision. It’s not my choice.”
Goalie Rick DiPietro (knee) will be out again tonight.