Saturday night in Columbus, the Islanders will play their 30th game of the season. And so far, the biggest and most widely-reported stories about the team have been:
- OMG Travis Hamonic wants a trade!
- Why isn't anyone going to Barclays Center?
Topic no. 1 we talked about as it broke and haven't had a lot of updates on since, and topic no. 2 I might have some thoughts on soon.
As for the actual on-ice product, from a macro view, the Islanders - with largely the same roster they had last season - are right about where most observers probably expected them to be: somewhere between third and fourth in the Metropolitan Division, behind the Capitals and Rangers; John Tavares has a bunch of goals, and so does Kyle Okposo; Jaroslav Halak is still pretty good; The fourth line hits a lot.