After the Isles 5-2 win over the Devils the other night, fans were pretty damn pleased on the e-mail and message boards. In all honesty, they had all right to be; the Isles played one of their better games of the season and got contributions from pretty much everyone. It was almost as if this team banded together and rose above the injuries to Rick DiPietro and Radek Martinek and understood what they have to do in order to win. Well, tonight against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Isles will also have to do without Mike Sillinger, who’s nursing some bumps and bruises.

I don’t know if you guys knew it, because I didn’t, but Sillinger’s been playing at less than 100% for quite some time now. Check out what Ted Nolan said on the team’s official website yesterday:

“It’s important that we give Mike Sillinger a game off to heal some injuries,” Nolan told newyorkislanders.com. “Fans don’t know this, no one does, but Mike has been banged up for a while and has shown a lot of guts playing through it. By giving him the one game off on Monday, it will give him four days to get a little more healthy until our home game on Thursday.”

At times like these, it stinks to be a fan. You have no idea when a player is playing injured and it makes it that much worse when you’re disappointed in his play. Now, it makes sense that he only 16 points this season. This kind of thing happens every summer when I cover the Cyclones, stuff like this happens all the time and the fans get on a player that’s playing with a sore hamstring or something else that could go unnoticed. Let’s just hope it’s nothing serious though. Anchoring the second line and playing in all situations all season, Sillinger is an extremely important piece to the puzzle for this team. We’ll see how things go tonight without him.

To take Silly’s place, Ben Walter has been called up, most likely to center the fourth line. Considering how solid Andy Hilbert has looked at center over the past few games, you’d expect him to be centering Trent Hunter and Ruslan Fedotenko. If not, I don’t know what kind of combinations they’ll have tonight. It should be an interesting game though, considering how inconsistent both of these teams have been this season.

If the defense and Wade Dubielewicz can play similarly to the way they performed against the Devils, the Hurricanes may have a tough night ahead of them. However, if Dubie and the defense aren’t up to the task, the ‘Canes, who have six players with over 30 points are going to have a field day on offense.

Posted under Pregame Musings