Doug Weight and Bill Guerin have played together before with varying degrees of success – briefly in St. Louis, on an Edmonton team that reached the Western Conference semifinals, and in the Olympics.
Now, the 37-year-olds find themselves in the middle of a rebuilding project on Long Island, but they insist their roles aren’t that much different than when they were a prolific scoring pair earlier in their careers.
“It’s not like we’re just here to teach,” Weight said of how he views himself on an Islanders team that by most accounts will have a difficult time reaching the postseason.
The Islanders no doubt are looking for the pair to set examples for many of their younger players – of which there are many. But Weight isn’t content with that.
“You mentor them and want to be approachable, but you don’t do anything different than you would anywhere else,” Weight said. “We still want to provide offense to this team. That never changes. The team wants to win and we want to win, no matter who’s here.”