{"id":327938,"date":"2025-12-04T20:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/327938\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:37:08","slug":"nelson-set-for-1st-game-at-islanders-since-trade-to-avalanche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/327938\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelson set for 1st game at Islanders since trade to Avalanche"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nelson indeed has plenty of great memories here, but his present is pretty good too; Colorado begins a four-game road trip with points in 17 straight games (14-0-3) and is atop the NHL standings (19-1-6). He has 17 points (nine goals, eight assists) in 26 games, including five points (three goals, two assists) in his past two.<\/p>\n

“He’s been great,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “Big change, right? Moving him, his family to Denver, new team, organization. He spent a lot of time here, so there was lots of new last year and he was just kind of trying to find his footing and his role within our team.<\/p>\n

“But this year, coming back and everything more familiar, lots of the same teammates, I feel like he’s really come into his own for us, especially recently here.”<\/p>\n

Nelson, who truly evolved into a 200-foot center when Barry Trotz arrived as Islanders coach prior to the 2018-19 season, could be a candidate to play for Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Bednar believes Nelson, who played for the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, should at least be considered for a bottom-six role due to his ability to play in all situations.<\/p>\n

Explore NHL.com’s Coverage of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Rosters for the Olympics must be submitted by Dec. 31.<\/p>\n

“Easily,” Bednar said. “He’s done it in the past. It just all depends on how [the U.S.] wants to build the team. \u2026 I think there’s so many moving parts to building those rosters and so many decisions that they’ve got to make, but watch his overall game, like the dependency of this guy — face-offs, power play, penalty kill — whatever you need, he can kind of do it all.<\/p>\n

“He might not be the flashiest guy or the most dynamic guy, but he does so many things and you can rely on him so many different areas. I think he’s certainly going to get talked about when these decisions are being made.”<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Nelson will try to continue to do his part to help the scorching-hot Avalanche win games, including Thursday, when it’s expected his former team will honor him with a video tribute during the first period.<\/p>\n

“I (have) never gone through it before; it’ll be fun,” Nelson said. “\u2026 It’s crazy how much time has flown. I was fortunate to spend a great portion of my life here and call it home.”<\/p>\n

“It’s great to see him, great to have him here,” Islanders captain Anders Lee<\/a> said. “\u2026 Expecting a warm welcome for him. Brock’s meant a lot to this room and to this organization for a long time. He had plenty of big moments and grew up here. It’s great to have him back and great to see him. I know the fans are probably excited to give him a little love that he deserves.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nelson indeed has plenty of great memories here, but his present is pretty good too; Colorado begins a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-327938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}