BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Devon Toews and Scott Mayfield have been defense partners for eight of Toews’ 10 NHL games. They were almost exclusively so through a training camp and preseason in which Toews showed quite definitively that he was ready for the Islanders.



Their partnership and ease goes back a couple of years.



“We lived in the same building, he was right above me,” Toews said of his old neighbor. This was the first half of the 2016-17 season, when Mayfield was waived early in Isles camp and spent the first two months of that year back in Bridgeport, where Toews was just getting his pro career started. “The communication is always good with Scotty. It’s been great with everyone you’re out there with.”



Mayfield, whose emergence this season after being a healthy scratch the first two games has been one of the underrated keys to the Isles’ defense corps turnaround, likes the fit with Toews, as...