Hopefully the Islanders can get a couple of goals against a good Ottawa Senators team to make life a little bit easier for Rick DiPietro. I’ve been saying it all season, the guy has been incredibly sharp [forgetting all about that debacle against the Hurricanes a few weeks ago.] and needs to get more support on offense. After a hot start, Ruslan Fedotenko [only 10 shots on goal in his past 12 games] Bill Guerin [10 games without a goal] and Mike Comrie [three points in his last nine games] have gotten ice cold and the powerplay has been even worse.

On top of that, the Islanders defense, which was chipping in a ton of points through the first dozen games, has cooled off as well, making the Islanders the lowest scoring team in the league with no threat of moving out of there for the time being. Guys like Bryan Berard, Chris Campoli and Marc-Andre Bergeron have to start taking more shots especially with the man advantage. Over the past two weeks, it feels like the team as a whole is just clutching their sticks way too tightly.

However, asking DP to play his heart out against a team with such a deep roster will not be easy, but what else can the Islanders do? The defense has been playing very well as of late and like any good hockey team, they have to play to their strengths. If the Isles can someone keep the Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley line off the scoreboard and take the body, all while getting the powerplay going, this could be an interesting game. However, if the Islanders don’t skate and commit lazy penalties, Rick DiPietro is going to be facing a lot of shots and it’s not going to be fun to watch.

While I’ve already mentioned the ineffectiveness of Comrie, Fedotenko and Guerin lately, Mike Sillinger, Trent Hunter and Andy Hilbert, the Isles second line, have only 17 combined points. Coming into today’s game, Spezza has 18 and Heatley has 26. If that doesn’t show how anemic the Islanders offensive attack has been as of late, I don’t know what does.

In all honesty, the only line that has been producing consistent offense this season has been the Islanders third line, as Miroslav Satan and Josef Vasicek have 15 goals between the two of them. If they can get going tonight, that would take some of the pressure of the other lines. Additionally, maybe Fedotenko will start to feed off the hard work of Satan and Vasicek and make that line even stronger than it already is.

We’ll see how things go against Ottawa.