The Islanders’ experimentation with Adam Boqvist at ahead isn’t over fairly but.
The defenseman received one other shot enjoying up entrance on Monday with Hudson Fasching out with sickness, taking Fasching’s spot on the fitting facet of the third line.
Boqvist centered the fourth line for a sport a pair weeks in the past in Anaheim when Kyle MacLean was unwell.
Not solely that, however Boqvist put up a pair of assists because the Islanders misplaced 4-3 to the Blue Jackets in a shootout.
“First of all it was funny because he wanted to see some clips,” coach Patrick Roy stated pregame. “So I like that the gamers care. They need to do nicely, doesn’t matter [where]. I feel you’re getting in a stretch, no matter you are able to do to assist the group.
“I think any defenseman, we ask them to play forward, they would all say yes. I think these guys all just want to try and make the playoffs. That’s all they want.”
With Matt Martin being the one further ahead, it seems the teaching employees would like to play Boqvist out of place, since he can even contribute on the ability play.
“I thought he did well,” Roy stated afterward. “It’s not easy for a guy — 10-minute practice, that’s all he had. I guess he did really well.”
Monday was Boqvist’s first sport within the lineup since he suffered a shoulder harm on March 11.
He and Alexander Romanov additionally got here down sick in between, and although it’s not clear MacLean, Boqvist, Romanov and Fasching all caught the identical sickness, the Islanders have been coping with an uncommon quantity of illness these days.
Roy used an unrelated query on Monday to make some extent in regards to the Islanders penalty kill, saying it upsets him to see individuals overlook the unit’s dramatic enchancment because the new 12 months.
“It bothers me when people are saying our PK sucks. Our PK doesn’t suck,” he stated. “Since January 1, we’re like eighth in the league in penalty killing at 81 percent. Eighty-one percent is pretty good.”
“So yeah, we had a tough start on PK, I’ll admit that, but since January 1, our PK is top-1 in the NHL so we gotta stop saying, ‘When you look at [season-long] statistics, the Islanders are at the bottom of the league’ — no. We’re not at the bottom of the league. We’re in the top of the league the way we’ve been killing penalties.”
