The Islanders may have found one of their biggest offseason upgrades without touching the trade market or dipping into free agency.
It comes down to Alexander Romanov.
General manager Mathieu Darche said Tuesday that the defenseman, who missed most of last season with a shoulder injury, has returned looking noticeably different and moving better. Darche said Romanov has been back for three weeks and has shed 12 pounds during his recovery.
“Romanov, he's been back for three weeks. He's 12 pounds lighter,” Darche said.
“That's as good as I've seen him, the way he's moving on the ice. I challenged him at the end of the year, and he put in the work this summer.”
Romanov had been trending toward a possible late-season return before a setback changed the plan. Darche said the Islanders first believed Romanov might have been ready for Game 1 of the playoffs, then later thought he could have come back midway through the first round if New York had qualified.
That return never came, which gave Romanov a full summer to recover, train and reshape his body.
“Now he looks great,” Darche said. “As I said, he slimmed down.”
For an Islanders team trying to push back into the postseason under coach Peter DeBoer, that matters. Romanov brings the kind of physical play, mobility and defensive bite the team was missing for much of last season. If the lighter build helps him skate better without taking away what makes him effective, the Islanders could be getting a more dynamic version of a player who already matters on their blue line.
There are still plenty of questions to be answered when training camp opens. But Darche’s first read on Romanov is a strong one, and it fits the way the Islanders approached the offseason: looking for improvement wherever they could find it. In this case, the biggest addition might already have been in the building.
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