Not Good

Lookit Eli over there. He can't believe it either. The Isles played a great first period and yet let the game slip back to the visiting Flyers by playing cautious, trying-to-be-too-cute hockey. Also, it bears mentioning that DiPietro didn't have his strongest game of the season either last night...but once the team stops playing with discipline and gets away from the direct style we've grown happy to see, the Islanders can find themselves in trouble.

The Islanders had a great first period and went into the break up 3-1 on goals by Richard Park, Josef Vasicek (it had been a while) and Bill Guerin.

By the end of the game, they'd squandered that two goal cushion and dropped the game 5-3. The Isles have lost three straight home games for the first time this season, and dropped their third consecutive to the freaking goon-laden Flyers.

We have a neighbor who has been known to reply, "Not good" if you ask him how he is doing. Well, if he were to ask any Islander fan how they were doing this morning--and I am typing this at like 5:30 in the morning, we'd all tell him that we were "Not good" as well.

Going into the third, the Isles were nursing a one goal lead. Then those tricky boards at the Coliseum hiccuped on Ricky. He tried to play the puck around the boards but the biscuit kicked funny off of off the skate of Scottie Upshall and landed with Hartnell, who deposited the puck into the empty net. Hartnell had a hat trick.

Monday is a big game with the visiting Hurricanes. General Colin Powell will be in the Coliseum to drop the ceremonial first puck. That should be very, very cool. We all need to forget the game from last night and move forward.

So, having said that, I will leave you all with this: LET'S GO G-MEN!!!