On Thursday night, the New York Islanders had to make a surprise goaltender change in their shootout loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, just before the shootout itself. The Islanders had to take out the starting goaltender, Evgeni Nabokov, for Rick DiPietro, who made his season debut, due to a lower-body injury. Nabokov reportedly suffered the injury in the overtime period and was not good enough to go in the one-on-one competition. On Saturday night, Nabokov was on the shelf, as Al Montoya backed up DiPietro for their game against the San Jose Sharks. Currently, Nabokov is listed as out day-to-day, without many more details than that.
In four appearances this season, Nabokov has a 1-2-0 record, with a 2.23 GAA and a .927 save percentage, which are pretty decent numbers for a sub-.500 record. It certainly suggests that Nabokov is keeping the Islanders in some close games, but lost a couple of them. His record has given him 2 points this year, which is not blowing the doors off the season, already four weeks in, but he could still be sought out as a trade deadline goalie later on.
For Allan S., this isn't the best time to have an injury problem, especially in net, but this appears to be the case. Allan has dropped down to 3rd place in the pool and is on the verge of dropping another position, having given up a pretty good gap in Week Four to a couple of streaking teams and an injury won't help a great deal. Allan's team was among the pool leaders in games played by skaters and minutes played by goaltenders in Week Four, which suggests there was a bit of a power outage in the team, which is normal for a team once and a while. There is still plenty of time to bounce back and take back some positions.
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