Christian Arnold
The youth movement appears to be in full swing on Long Island. While the likes of Oliver Wahlstrom, Noah Dobson and Michael Dal Colle have thrived recently, Kieffer Bellows has remained conspicuously absent from the lineup.
After appearing in seven of the New York Islanders’ first eight games of the year, Bellows has appeared in just one game since the calendar Jan. 30. And in his lone appearance on Feb. 18 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the 22-year-old had a rough night on the ice playing just 7:29 of the game and getting beat by Jason Zucker on Pittsburgh’s third goal of the night.
Bellows was a minus-2 on the night and saw just two shifts in the final frame of the game. Islanders head coach Barry Trotz didn’t let Bellows off the hook that night and he hasn’t put him back in the lineup since.
Now two weeks removed from that night in Pittsburgh Wahlstrom has all but secured his spot in the Isles’ lineup for the moment and Dal Colle’s renaissance this season has continued. That has left Bellows continuously on the outside looking in.
“You sort of have to find your way back in. Kieffer was handed the keys early because he earned it and played OK,” Trotz said ahead of the Islanders matchup with Buffalo on Thursday. “I tried different things, but he’s probably just in a waiting pattern to see if he can get in. He’s got to work hard, he’s working hard every day.”
The Islanders bench boss categorized Kieffer Bellows as one of the “great personalities” on the team’s taxi squad, but said that he wasn’t working to get anyone back into the lineup. Trotz also mentioned the other members of the Islanders taxi squad and how hard they prepare so that they are ready when they do get their chance to play.
The two examples of that, which Trotz pointed to, were Wahlstrom and Dal Colle. The two had not been in the Isles’ lineup to start the year, but played so well they’ve been hard to take out of the lineup since.
For Kieffer Bellows to get a shot at being back in the lineup Trotz has a simple suggestion for him, and that’s to play his brand of hockey. Trotz liked what he had seen early on in the year in Bellow’s play on both sides of the puck, but then the Islanders coach noticed that start to diminish.
“It fell off towards the end of his run and this is where sometimes it’s a little bit of a red flag for a coach,” Trotz said. “Is when a player starts feeling the pressure that I got to produce. He started to get on the wrong side of the puck and then what I call poke and hopes and stuff like that a little bit more than he was earlier. When they start doing that then they’re trying to get the production, but they’re giving up a lot more as well.
“You just want that balance, so I traded him out a little bit.”
At this point, Trotz is now watching to see if Wahlstrom and Dal Colle can sustain their success in the long run. And that doesn’t mean that Bellows is out of the picture either.
“Some players go in and out of the lineup and every time it’s sort of like training,” Trotz explained. “They recognized that they can’t let their foot off the gas peddle. Then all of a sudden they have a long stretch of success and then they become really good NHL players. I think (Bellows, Wahlstrom and Dal Colle) are all in that sort of different stages of that development.”
