"When guys watch their peers play, sometimes it's more valuable than coaching," Nolan said. "They watch Brendan Witt do that on a consistent basis, and Freddy just kind of stepped up and did what Brendan would do. He caught Spezza with a good open-ice hit."
"It's been a lot of hard work, getting sent down to San Antonio and not sulking, and then getting called back up to the NHL and getting picked up by the Islanders," Meyer said. "I was here but not playing, which is tough. Now I have a big role, but I can't change the way I've been playing. I'm going to show up and work hard and have some poise on the back end and make smart plays."
Ottawa Sun: Don Brennan had comments from Senators Coach John Paddock where he blamed Bruno Gervais and some of the Islanders defenseman for targeting Daniel Alfredsson after calling out some of his own players and the officials.
"They have a bunch of 6- foot defencemen running around and they ran at Alfie early," said Paddock. "We couldn't do anything about it because of the closeness of the game and us being behind. I don't think Bruno Gervais should get away with the liberties he got away with on Alfredsson.
"I'm more concerned about Bruno Gervais getting involved in a 1-on-1 with Alfie having to cross-check him back in front of the net," added Paddock. "(The Meyer hit) is like when Chris Neil hit Chris Drury last year. It was a clean hit. You've got to take clean hits sometimes. It doesn't mean you're not going to deliver a clean hit back. If a guy's got a chance to hit somebody, you hit him. And if you hurt him, you hurt him. That's hockey. It's just good it wasn't Scott Stevens hitting him."
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Seems to me Daniel Alfredsson was trying to hit any Islander he could find all night as hard as he could with Christopher Schubert trying to do all he could to engage the Islanders and change the momentum. For once Ottawa had the parade of penalties in our head to head games. Even their in-game people got confused and played the Sens pp music after an Ottawa penalty.
NY Times: Ranger beatwriter Lynn Zinser did not travel to Pittsburgh but did have a feature on Long Island products Mike Komisarek and Christopher Higgins who train in the summer at the same facility that Rick DiPietro, Eric Nystrom do.
NY Post: Dan Martin's editor allowed him to write two paragrahps on Brendan Witt and the Islanders in the Post return to covering Islander hockey after almost two weeks off.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
It should be noted the Post did not travel to Pittsburgh to cover the Rangers but did have their writer do a blog on the game which begs the question how come the Post does not do the same thing when the Islanders are on the road for two weeks?
Montreal Gazette: Pat Hickey has a feature on Rick DiPietro, Mike Komisarek and Christopher Higgins and their friendly rivalry. Canadians lineup will be the same with Cristobal Huet in goal unless Patrice Brisebois cannot play after limping out of practice.
"It's pretty sweet to come back here in the summers and have that over him," Komisarek said after a practice at the Islanders IceWorks, the complex in nearby Syosset where he and Higgins work out during the summer. "Ricky's a pretty confident guy and he can be pretty loud, so it's nice to get those bragging rights."
And while Higgins jokingly said DiPietro has a "big enough mouth that you can't miss him," he expects a tough game against the surging Isles, who are coming off a 3-1 win Sunday in Ottawa.
"Ricky keeps them in every game," Higgins said.
AHL.com: Kyle Okposo was nominated for AHL player of the week but did not win.