The Islanders returned to work on Friday, having had two days to bask in the glow of their first-round sweep of the Penguins, and the coaching staff quickly got to the point:
There were push-ups. There were sit-ups. There were sprints. There were simulations of game conditions. There were blunt words.
"Coaches aren’t going to let us slack off in practice; you saw it,” Matt Martin said. “Anytime we messed up, we got talked to. We have to bring that intensity in practice that you would normally try to bring to a game.
"I imagine we’ll do a lot of that over the next five to seven days.