Early schedule hurt Isles

New York Islander Fan Central | 3/14/2008 05:15:00 PM |
You do not want to give a team that fails many excuses, however some things do have to be brought up here because they were a factor in the Isles failure this season but that cannot be used as the reason the club will not be returning to the playoffs.

The schedule in the first month where the Islanders played about four games in twenty days after five games in seven days to start the season did turn out to hurt because since Christmas they have not had three days off in a row aside from the
all-star break.

Isles have had only a few two days stretches off also in the month of February.

I'm only using them as an example but by contract the Rangers have had:
Feb 11th-15th five day break.
Feb 20th-22nd three day break.
Feb 25th-27th three day break.
March 11th-13th three day break.

My guess is it would not have hurt the veterans or Rick DiPietro to have that kind of rest as opposed to the schedule they were given where they barely played in October.

Having written that scoring two goals or less fourteen games in a row in the second month of the season does not give them a pass just based on schedule because they were not producing at a time they should have been at their best.

Overall the two hundred and ninety man (and counting) games lost to injury does to a point because that schedule did wear down the veterans as the season progressed into February and the Isles have had to deal with a lot of injury problems.

In the end the nine defenders who started here all were injured/benched and it was not enough depth.

I'm not giving excuses for the teams failure but some things do have to be mentioned along the way that have been a factor.