Islanders’ Scott Mayfield has surgery to end injury-plagued season
NY Post
Scott Mayfield’s season is over.
The defenseman underwent season-ending surgery to address a lower-body injury that has kept him on long-term injured reserve since the end of February, the Islanders announced Tuesday.
Mayfield is “expected to make full recovery and have no issues or delays with his summer training regiment,” the Islanders said in a statement.
The first season of Mayfield’s seven-year deal signed last summer was beset by injuries from the very first game, with Mayfield blocking a shot off his ankle on opening night and missing two weeks.
That ankle injury never quite healed, even as Mayfield suffered a different upper-body injury in mid-December.
Just a handful of days before going on LTIR, Mayfield told The Post that his ankle didn’t feel better until the All-Star break.
It was only a three-second glimpse, but Matt Rempe, finally, showcased offensive strides. The ones he started talking about in the preseason — after a summer’s worth of work — and kept doubling down on, even when he fluctuated in and out of the Rangers lineup and shuttled back and forth to AHL Hartford.
In a different time, in a season to come, we may be inclined to wax poetic about the way this one played out. In a different time, in a season to come, the Nets will be seeking to stack wins and not losses, will be fighting for playoff seeding and not for a few extra ping-pong balls in the draft lottery this spring.
The NBA has an All-Star Game problem. Despite Adam Silver’s efforts to inject juice into the February showcase — including a format alteration to the 2025 game that is too confusing to attempt to understand before it’s inevitably changed again — there’s little interest in watching teams eschew defense for a series of layup line highlights. That also means the most entertaining part of the NBA All-Star Game is just like the Pro Bowl — debating over who should get a spot.