DiPietro stars, Lighthouse Cup update

Rick DiPieto may not make the Eastern Conference All-Star team but his value to this club was never more evident than Tuesday night's shootout loss to Vancouver. DiPietro, as he did in the OT loss against the Avalanche, was the main reason the Isles were able to salvage a point, and on this tough Western swing, those points are big.

Forty-three saves against the Canucks, including 18 in the first period alone as Vancouver looked to run the Isles out of the building the way the Oilers jumped on them in the second period a night earlier. So credit D.P for keeping his team in the game and giving it a chance to come back, and also for battling in the six-round shootout.

Great goal by Bill Guerin, not only from the low angle but just making the play happen while the Canucks let up, thinking the play was off-sides. No whistle was blown, however, and the Isles caught a break again when Luongo mishandled a puck that Blake Comeau knocked home.

I received a comment on my post about the Lighthouse Cup, which is happening Monday, Jan. 21 at 5 p.m., after the game against the Hurricanes. The high-school All-Star game matches Suffolk against Nassau.

The anonymous poster claimed that the Suffolk team was being broken up because 22 of the 25 players on the roster had a conflict between their travel hockey games and an exhibition game Saturday Jan. 12 upstate against the Hudson Valley All-Stars. The poster said that the players were told that they would be off the team if they didn't play in the exhibition game.

An extremely reliable source tells me that, after 'an enormous amount of complaints,' a compromise was reached. Suffolk will play Hudson Valley in the first game of the home-and-home all-star games Friday Jan. 11 at 8:20 p.m. at the Rinx. A second all-star team will play the game at Hudson Valley Saturday, allowing players on the original all-star team to play in their travel games. The original team will also play against Nassau on Jan. 21.

So if you want a sneak preview of the Suffolk team that will take the ice in the Lighthouse Cup, and if you want to see two outstanding young teams, be at the Rinx tomorrow night at 8:20 p.m., and we'll see you at the Lighthouse Cup as well.

Game recap: Thrashers 4, Islanders 3 (shootout)

Ted Nolan wasn't happy with getting a point on the road, and we shouldn't be either, even if the Islanders finally scored more than two goals.

Of course, it was only three, and that's 16 games now that the Isles haven't scored more than that. But hey, baby steps.

The power play this time not only wasn't terribly productive (although Trent Hunter's goal in the third did come on the man advantage, tying the score), it was COUNTER-productive to the extreme as the Thrashers scored TWO shorthanded goals in the second period. Just awful.

The second shorty was the third straight goal by Atlanta, which erased a 1-0 deficit to go up 3-1. On the bright side, the Isles didn't fold on the road and battled back on goals by Sillinger and Hunter.

Slava Kozlov and Ilya Kovalchuk scored in the shootout for the Thrashers while Guerin and Satan failed for the Isles. DiPietro complained to the officials about Kozlov's hesitation move, claiming he skated a step back, which is against the rules. No matter - goal.

On a side note, the Thrashers' home sweaters are absolutely terrible, with ATLANTA down the left sleeve. Whoever designed that would certainly get an "auf weidersehen" from Keidi Klum on 'Project Runway.' (My wife watches the show. I watch for Heidi.)