Devils 4 Islanders 2; Weight out again

Outside of mentioning the staggering amount of man games lost to injury, you can sum up the Islanders 2008-09 season with this one statistic: the Isles are 1-11-2 against the other teams in the Atlantic Division.

The latest loss to a division foe came last night at The Rock as our boys fell to the Devils 4-2. The Isles also lost Doug Weight in the second period he and Brian Gionta ran into each other.

The Islanders' goals came from suddenly on-fire Radek Martinek (his second; to open the scoring in the first) and Kyle Okposo, who got his eleventh on the power-play at 6:15 of the second period. It was another of Kyle's patented "turn and burn"-type goals where he spun past Devils defenseman Bryce Salvador and then turned inside toward the net and scored on his own rebound. Somewhere Steve Thomas is smiling.

Mike Emrick had a point last night: the Isles really are onto something with Okposo. There's proof right there that the rebuilding program is working. We just may have us a budding star in number 21. He shows more to us every game. The guy always plays hard, is not afraid to show that speed burst, and has the confidence to put all sorts of moves out of his bag. You always notice him out there.

Now we just need a couple more like him.

Zach Parise had two goals, including the winner, and added two assists for the Devils. Somewhere Robert Nilsson is shrugging his shoulders and somewhere else Pierre McGuire is shaking his head.

Also on Wednesday, the Islanders issued a public response regarding speculation from the New York Daily News (that we posted here) about a possible move to Queens. Isles spokesman Seth Sylvan said, "We are very flattered with the interest expressed in the Islanders by various Queens elected officials and business leaders, however, our current focus is to work diligently with the Town of Hempstead to obtain approvals for the Lighthouse Project."

Fair enough.

Don't forget that tonight at 7:30 on the NHL Network is the episode of "Voices" featuring Howie Rose. How did we live without the NHL Network, people? Really? How did we do it?

On Saturday the NHLN is replaying all three games of the 1996 World Cup of Hockey beginning at noon. Just an alert to the Guerin and Weight households. And then on the 21st, it's CBC's Hockey Day In Canada from Campbelltown, New Brunswick.