Islanders’ much-needed win overshadowed by slew of injury worries
NY Post
BUFFALO — A day after Halloween, the Islanders nearly suffered a Nightmare on Perry Street.
They escaped Buffalo with a badly needed 4-3 win over the Sabres but not without losing a trio of players in KeyBank Center, which felt at times like their own House of Horrors.
The news of Mat Barzal having traveled back to Long Island with an upper-body injury came down in the morning, then Adam Pelech and Mike Reilly both got hurt during the game, with Reilly suffering a potentially serious injury when appearing to hit his head on the ice after a second-period hit from Jordan Greenway.
There was no update on either afterward, though Pelech was seen holding his jaw.
Reilly will travel back to New York with the team, and coach Patrick Roy was still miffed with the no-call on Greenway after the play was initially assessed a five-minute major.
Still, this was a gritty and hard-earned victory, with the Islanders playing the second half of the game with just four defensemen and breaking a morale-sucking three-game losing streak.
I decided if I wrote about Rickey Henderson I would not use a statistic. We are assaulted with stats and metrics now, and while baseball is our most numbers-oriented sport, I do sense the analytics revolution has chilled too many fans and reporters from just talking about how certain players made you feel while watching them.
It should come as no surprise by now that the Knicks lead the NBA in minutes played by their dynamic starting five by a considerable margin.
WASHINGTON — Before Jonas Valanciunas signed his three-year, $32 million deal with the Wizards — a free agent contract that felt almost immediately like a future trade piece — the bruising center heard a little bit about the Knicks’ interest.
The 49ers and Lions sure know how to put on an entertaining show for a game that meant nothing to either team.