As a coach, there’s only so much you can control. On the offensive side of the puck you can offer some general guidelines for your players, but generally speaking they’re free to take what they’re given and offered license to use their own hockey sense and creativity. This is one of the reasons you’re constantly hearing from coaches in their post-game press conferences about defence. They fixate on what they can control, so it’s constantly at the front of their mind.



All that sets us up for a sentence I’m sorry to have to write about a guy I like a lot: This Islanders season reflects awfully poorly on Doug Weight and the rest of the coaching staff.



Truly, they are and have been an absolute defensive debacle, to say nothing of their also-sloppy neutral zone play. If the Islanders are in the game, you can bet on a damn track meet out there, every night.



I’ve had Islanders fans writing me since just after the puck...