New York Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello confirmed this week that Adam Pelech has been cleared to participate when on-ice activities resume.
This is pretty excellent news for the Islanders, as we expected Pelech to be out for the season. He’s the team’s most reliable defenseman and his absence was felt on the Islanders’ blue line, so greatly even that the team went and found a temporary replacement for him in Andy Greene. But now that Pelech will be back, how will that affect the defense group?
Well, for starters it almost certainly means that Noah Dobson will be in the press box for the majority of the playoffs, unless there’s an injury or two amongst New York’s defense group. Dobson got ice time at the end of the year after Johnny Boychuk was injured but at this point, it’s pretty unlikely that he’ll be trusted in high-stakes games.
It’s really going to come down to either Andy Greene or Johnny Boychuk being scratched. Boychuk is the natural right-handed defenseman but Greene was playing quite a bit more than Boychuk. If it were up to me, I’m starting Greene on the right-side of the bottom-pairing. He’s reliable and he’s able to log quite a bit more ice time than Boychuk will be able to. Boychuk can’t really provide any more offense than Greene would, so it’s not like the Islanders would be losing much by scratching Boychuk in favour of Greene.
The Islanders will have quite a bit of depth on defense now heading into the playoffs, which means the team will have the option to make some changes if necessary. To start, however, I’d like to see Greene take the last spot on defense, with Boychuk and Dobson scratched to start the playoffs.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted on the weekend):
With Pelech back, who do you think will be scratched?
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