{"id":202977,"date":"2025-10-10T15:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202977\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:39:12","slug":"beards-are-back-for-islanders-after-old-school-exec-lou-lamoriellos-departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202977\/","title":{"rendered":"Beards are back for Islanders after old-school exec Lou Lamoriello’s departure"},"content":{"rendered":"

EAST MEADOW, N.Y. \u2014 Images from the New York Islanders<\/a>\u2019 annual charity golf outing last month on social media went viral because something was very different about some of the familiar faces fans have seen for years.<\/p>\n

Facial hair is back in style on Long Island in the post-Lou Lamoriello era. The old-school hockey executive, during\u00a0his seven years in charge,\u00a0had a policy, much like late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, requiring players, coaches and staff to be clean-shaven.<\/p>\n

Lamoriello’s contract was not renewed\u00a0last spring, and the beards have returned for coach Patrick Roy and many of the Islanders. Goaltender Ilya Sorokin even has one for the first time in his NHL career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one less thing to worry about when you come to the rink,\u201d forward and beard aficionado Kyle Palmieri said. \u201cI think it was part of our team standard to be clean-shaven, and I had no issues with it other than having to go through a lot of razors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those razors shelved for now for some, players are quick to praise Lamoriello, a three-time Stanley Cup-winning general manager in New Jersey who also spent time in Toronto and brought with him a level of decorum and class that they appreciated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all respected Lou\u2019s rules in here, and rules are rules,\u201d defenseman Ryan Pulock said. \u201cGuys look presentable at all times when we were clean-shaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Livestream Hockey Night in Canada, Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey, the Oilers, Flames, Canucks, out-of-market matchups, the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the NHL Draft.<\/p>\n

Broadcast schedule<\/a><\/p>\n

Fourth-liner Casey Cizikas is the organization’s longest-tenured player and has run the gamut from stubble and full beards to a Movember mustache. He put the razor away and let his next beard start growing as soon as last season ended.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shaved once throughout the summer,” Cizikas said on the first day of training camp. \u201cBut (I am) just going in, seeing how it looked and here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a lot of fresh faces around this fall who were brought in by\u00a0new GM Mathieu Darche, a retired player with a pair of championship rings from his time in Tampa Bay’s front office. Darche considers himself lucky to arrive after the Islanders\u00a0won the draft lottery\u00a0for the No. 1 pick and the chance to\u00a0select defenseman Matthew Schaefer, who has already made a strong impression and on Thursday night\u00a0became the youngest player in league history\u00a0to record a point in his debut.<\/p>\n

Schaefer, for what it’s worth, just turned 18 and is clean-shaven. Maybe he’ll follow Sidney Crosby’s lead and keep the facial hair to a minimum well into his 30s.<\/p>\n

Now he has the option, which many of the veterans around him have embraced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the rule was dropped here, I think some guys just mixed it up a little bit,\u201d Pulock said. \u201cI kind of started letting it grow: something different that I haven\u2019t had in a while. It\u2019s something I have right now. It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019ll stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palmieri similarly did not commit to keeping his beard, which is now full and thick with the season underway. The 34-year-old felt weird not shaving even after Lamoriello was gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the course of the summer, you just get lazy and forget to shave, forget to shave and then all of a sudden you have a beard,\u201d Palmieri said. \u201cCould wake up tomorrow and shave it off.”<\/p>\n

Or that could wait until April if the Islanders exceed expectations to finish among the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference. Then a whole set of playoff beards would be in order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST MEADOW, N.Y. \u2014 Images from the New York Islanders\u2019 annual charity golf outing last month on social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-202977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}