New York Islanders Stepping Up Their Game

The New York Islanders started the season in 29th place, just above the Columbus Blue Jackets, an now they are 23rd, which is a big jump. In their last 10 games, they went 6-2-2. That is amazing. The team who holds their season-opening spot is Edmonton, with 47 points, and Columbus is dead last still with 36 points. The Isles currently have 52 points. And what is the reason for this sudden success? Let’s find out.

Evgeni Nabokov was in a bit of a pickle at the start of this season, since the New York Islanders had 4 goalies or so to fill their goalie positions, and since they decided to keep Nabokov, he shows them they made the right choice. Evgeni Nabokov has been exceptional since he started in the league. He is a very talented goalkeeper who should have multiple offers each year from different teams. I even have him on my fantasy team.

What I’m getting at is the goalkeeper is good. He had 45 saves in a shutout win in a shootout (what a mouthful!) against the Philadelphia Flyers Tuesday night, with the help of a shootout winner by John Tavares and and stop on Wayne Simmonds by Nabokov. Nabokov is a big part of the Isles success. He knows how to stop the puck.

To end on an Islanders note, an author, John Leake has written a book called “Cold A Long Time: An Alpine Mystery-Duncan MacPherson. For those young or new hockey fans, MacPherson was a young guy who got drafted by the Islanders went missing in 1989 in a skiing incident in Europe. He was said to be a promising young player who could change the game.

The following quote, is a brief synopsis of the book, as per the book’s facebook page:

In August of 1989, twenty-three-year-old Duncan MacPherson—a pro hockey player from Saskatoon, Canada—vanished without a trace in Europe. With no help from the police, his parents, Lynda and Bob, drove all over the Alps looking for him, and finally found his car at the Stubai Glacier, a popular ski resort near Innsbruck, Austria. Thus began their twenty-year struggle to find out why their son had disappeared after taking a snowboarding lesson on a beginner slope. Had he, as the local police suggested, wandered off the beaten track and died in a remote area, or had he been the victim of something sinister?In the course of their search, the MacPhersons encountered an extraordinary cast of characters, including corrupt cops, a 5,000-year-old ice mummy, an amnesiac initially thought to be Duncan, a renowned psychic with a startling vision, a charismatic ski resort developer, and a deceptively friendly forensic pathologist.In 2009 they asked author John Leake to help them with their ongoing search for answers, and after a two-year investigation, he discovered the shocking reality of what happened to Duncan. Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery recounts the strange and agonizing odyssey of the MacPherson family. It is a story about enduring love, perseverance, and the irrepressible desire to know the truth, literally at all cost. It is also the story of a twisted cover-up, committed by employees of the Stubai Glacier, the local police, and high-ranking authorities in Innsbruck.Leake’s findings are the subject of the television documentary “A Cold Case,” produced by the fifth estate—Canada’s premier investigative news program.www.cbc.ca/fifth/2011-2012/acoldcase/“Leake skillfully and exhaustively takes a complex story and makes it eminently readable.” -The Regina Leader-Post

If you are interested in purchasing the book, please go to this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Long-Time-Alp…