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head coach: Rick Bowness

roster: C - Robert Reichel, Trevor Linden, Bryan Smolinski, Claude Lapointe, Sergei Nemchinov. LW - Mike Hough, Ken Belanger, Tom Chorske, Gino Odjick. RW - Zigmund Palffy, Jason Dawe, Joe Sacco, Mariusz Czerkawski, Dan Plante, Steve Webb, Vladimir Orszagh. D - Scott Lachance, Bryan Berard, Richard Pilon, Kenny Jonsson, J.J. Daigneault, Zdeno Chara, Dennis Vaske. G - Tommy Salo, Wade Flaherty.

injuries: Dennis Vaske, d (post-concussion syndrome, indefinite).

transactions: Traded Paul Kruse, lw, and Jason Holland, d, to Buffalo for Jason Dawe, rw.

standings:

Eastern Conference - Atlantic Division   
Team           GP   W   L   T   PTS   GF   GA   
x-New Jersey   76  46  21   9   101  208  149  
x-Philadelphia 75  39  25  11    89  220  177  
Washington     75  36  28  11    83  202  189  
NY Rangers     77  23  36  18    64  186  217  
NY Islanders   74  26  38  10    62  194  209  
Florida        75  23  40  12    58  184  231  
Tampa Bay      75  17  49   9    43  144  241  
x - Clinched playoff spot

game results:

3/24 at Vancouver   L 4-3
3/26 Pittsburgh     W 4-3
3/28 at Toronto     L 4-3 (OT)
3/31 at Washington  L 5-2
4/01 Tampa Bay      W 4-0
4/04 NY Rangers     W 3-0
4/06 at Tampa Bay   W 3-0

team news:

by David Strauss, NY Islanders Correspondent

So, what's new this week in the soap opera that is As the Islanders Turn? Not much, except for a couple fun details:

1. 1996 first round pick JP Dumont, who GM Mike Milbury strongly criticized in midseason for his contract demands, is making Milbury eat his words, although Mike probably is quite happy about it. Dumont, who was 165 pounds when he was first drafted, has bulked up to 6'2", 205, and has torn up the QMJHL since he returned from the World Juniors Championships. Dumont had 52 points in the final 23 games of the season to finish with 57 goals and 42 assists in 55 games, +39. And he has 15 goals and 25 points in nine playoff games to lead the league. Milbury, who had said earlier he was definitely going to let Dumont reenter the draft, left the Island to scout Dumont the other night. Dumont responded with another four-point game. Looks like the boy wants to be in Uniondale next year, where the Isles surely could use his scoring.

2. New Islanders tough guy Gino Odjick is standing by the comments he made this past week about current Canucks captain Mark Messier, despite the firestorm they created in the Canadian press. Odjick said that Messier "didn't break a sweat for the first 10 games" of the season and essentially waited for the axe to fall on coach Tom Renney and GM Pat Quinn. Messier suggested the words may have come out of Odjick's mouth, but were really the words of someone else, say, former Canucks captain Trevor Linden, who has so far refused to get into the fight directly. "I think it's pretty obvious what's going on," Messier said. Linden has denied his involvement.

3. Now that Rich Pilon has signed for a three-year deal worth about $5 million, it's time for Kenny Jonsson to start screaming a certain line from "Jerry McGuire" too. Jonsson, 23, becomes a restricted free agent at season's end. He has not just been the Isles' best defenseman, but their best player almost consistently, and shown that being left off the Swedish Olympic team was a serious error on the Swedes' part. We at LCS have no explanation for this error. I mean, the Swedes consider us Gods, so we love 'em, but I don't get it. Anyway, Jonsson has been a workhorse in his own end, recently logging at least 30 minutes a game. His improved strength has been the key to a season in which he had 14 goals -- 11 more than last season -- and 37 points.

Hmmm...what else happened this week? Lets see...played the Bolts twice, shut them out twice, check. Fan forum night, check. Played an afternoon game against the Rangers which ended in a huge brawl and a major shouting match back and forth through the papers with the New York dailies showing an almost phenominal bias and displaying a lack of journalistic integrity not seen since the 19th century? Check.

Okay, for those that didn't see it, this is what happened.

With the Islanders up 2-0 in the third, but playing sloppy, Joe Sacco scored a lucky goal to put the team up 3-0 with about seven minutes left. Mike Milbury, who has been known to call timeouts at strange times (on opening night a couple years ago, about four minutes in), called a timeout to remind his team to play smart and protect the shutout. Not a big surprise, since the Isles had blown a 4-0 lead to the Senators with less than 10 minutes to go in the third period about two weeks ago, and not a dumb move.

The Rangers, led by brain donee John Muckler and all-around Sportsman of the Year Ulf "The entire league cheered when Tie Domi beat my brains in" Samuelsson, decided the move was designed to show them up. Muckler called it "bush league." Apparently it is now against NHL rules to get a three-goal lead on the Rangers. So, in order to show Milbury that Muckler was above such games, he sent out his top skill players to counter the Islanders' top line of Zigmund Palffy, Trevor Linden, and Mariusz Cherzkawski. That is, if you consider being able to brush your teeth a skill.

Twenty-four seconds after play resumed, the ice exploded in five one-on-one rumbles. The pairings were Czerkawski-P.J. Stock, J.J. Daigneault-Jeff Beukeboom, Linden-Bill Berg and Zdeno Chara-Darren Langdon, the bout that triggered the mess. Now, Mariusz ain't exactly the Polish Power, Ivan Putski, and Stock was long past beating him up into creating another incarnation for the European winger when Tommy Salo had had enough. Salo, who never took off his gloves, raced over to help Chow get the meathead Stock off his back. Dan Cloutier, the Ranger goalie who has obviously lost his thinking abilities because of all those red lights he keeps seeing, then raced down the ice, and gloves and jersey off, pounded Salo through the ice. Cloutier then challenged the whole Islander bench, being the big man that he is, knowing that the first guy on the ice gets a 10-game suspension.

The incident was remarkably similar to the one Al Arbour pulled in the 1990 Playoffs, where, reacting to an unpenalized questionable hit that knocked their star Pat LaFontaine out of the series, the Islanders sent out Ken Baumgartner, Mick Vukota, and other tough guys to make the Rangers regret their ways. It was a morally objectionable action then, an act totally out of character with the rest of Arbour's Hall of Fame, dignified career -- and it was morally objectionable now.

So, it was assumed, the NY papers would take Muckler to task for gooning it up.

Bad assumption. In a series of wonderful displays of journalistic integrity (that's sarcasm, folks), the NY hockey writers all came out attacking Milbury for daring to call a timeout and get his team settled. I wonder if they'd had the same reaction if the situation had been reversed and Ken Belanger, Gino Odjick, and Rich Pilon had been beating on Brian Leetch and Wayne Gretzky. One thinks not.

There's one more meeting this season, April 15th. With both NY teams out of the playoffs in the same year for the first time ever, don't expect that game to feature any Lady Byng play. The rivalry, which had been faltering in recent years, is back.

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