Here I sit broken hearted...

I keep hearing this old song from the 1980s in my head...I think it is Loverboy..."It's o-ver! It's o-ver! It's oooooo-veeerrr!"

The Isles dropped a clunker to the last-place Lightning last night, 8-4. The good news is that our boys go right back at 'em tonight in Florida to meet the Panthers. The bad news is that with 71 points in 71 games, they're just about ready to call for mid-April tee times.

Another thing I just calculated: the Isles are fifth from the bottom in the entire NHL right now. It goes like this: Los Angeles (60); Tampa (68); Atlanta (68); St. Louis (69); and the Isles. How many ping pong balls does fifth-worst get in the entry draft lottery.

Ben Walter--up from the Bridge because Josef Vasicek came down with the flu--scored his first goal as an Islander on the power play. So right there, that is something positive. Of course, having a recent call-up playing on your power play isn't exactly standard operating procedure. Besides, Vincent Lecavalier had a hat trick for the hosts so that kind of negates any good will from Ben Walter. But good for him.

The other Islander goals were scored by Bill Guerin (a nasty wrister in the first); Ruslan Fedotenko (a breakaway kicked in by the Tampa goalie doing his best Darren Puppa imitation); and Mike Comrie.

Then, to add injury to insult, we have this headline in today's Newsday: "Nolan at odds with DiPietro after blowout loss."

Just what we need. The coach and the franchise are allegedly not getting along. These things tend to get overblown because they make good copy in what has turned out to be a completely unsatisfying season.

Nolan on Ricky, from Newsday: "We ask him over and over again not to play the puck as much," Nolan said of DiPietro. "He's one of the best puck-handlers in the league, but you just can't overhandle it. When you overhandle it, you get yourself in trouble a little bit."

Again, Islanders coach Ted Nolan: "The only thing you can do is keep going through it over and over again. You can't do that. You've got to let our defense handle it a little bit more. He just wants to play it. What can you do?"

DiPietro response, also from Newsday: "Whatever."

Indeed.