The New York Islanders have been forced to patch together their lineup early in the 2026-27 season, and that shuffled fourth line wasted no time making its mark.
With Mathew Barzal still not skating as he works back from a knee ailment that kept him out of training camp, the Islanders were already thin. Then Calum Ritchie and Matias Maccelli both went down with lower-body injuries against the Toronto Maple Leafs, leaving the club to adjust again. Ritchie and Maccelli are each expected to miss multiple weeks, opening the door for Kyle MacLean and Mitchell Chaffee to step in against the Anaheim Ducks.
MacLean, who had been a healthy scratch, was set for his season debut. Chaffee came up from the Hamilton Hammers and both were dropped onto a fourth line with veteran center Casey Cizikas. The group had little time to build chemistry before puck drop, but that didn’t stop them from setting a tone right away.
The line played with plenty of bite, and Chaffee ended up in the middle of one of the game’s more physical moments. After he laid a heavy hit on Frank Vatrano near the Ducks’ bench, AJ Greer came calling.
Greer, listed at 6-foot-3 and 224 pounds, challenged Chaffee, who is listed at 6 feet and 197 pounds. Chaffee answered the bell anyway, dropping the gloves for the second time in his NHL career.
“When you're going around hitting guys too, that’s gonna happen,” Chaffee said of the scrap, via Tyler Millen of NHL.com. “He kept asking me to go so you got to do what you got to do.”
Chaffee logged just 9:13 of ice time, but his imprint was obvious. MacLean played 9:56 and contributed on the defensive side with five hits and a faceoff win. More importantly for a checking line, the trio also gave the Islanders some push at the other end, generating three scoring chances at five-on-five, according to Millen.
“They did a great job,” DeBoer said of Chaffee and MacLean. “I didn't have to hide them.
They had some shifts against the big guys. I thought they gave us energy, they gave us some physicality.
Some really good puck possession shifts, especially in the third period. When you're up in a game like that, the best defense is ozone time and just a little bit of grind in your game and I thought they did a good job of that.”
As the game went on, the line settled in and started to look more comfortable together. MacLean, Cizikas and Chaffee turned into a hard-nosed unit that spent more and more time in the offensive zone, and that kind of performance could keep them in the spotlight over the next few weeks. With Maccelli out at least two weeks and Ritchie sidelined for at least four, that fourth line now has a real chance to show it belongs on the NHL roster.
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