{"id":203069,"date":"2025-10-10T16:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T16:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/203069\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T16:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T16:29:07","slug":"beards-are-back-for-new-york-islanders-after-old-school-executive-lou-lamoriellos-departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/203069\/","title":{"rendered":"Beards are back for New York Islanders after old-school executive Lou Lamoriello’s departure"},"content":{"rendered":"

EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) \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

Many had beards on them.<\/p>\n

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

Lamoriello\u2019s contract was not renewed last spring, and the beards have returned for coach Patrick Roy<\/a> and many of the Islanders. Goaltender Ilya Sorokin<\/a> 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<\/a> 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<\/a> said. \u201cGuys look presentable at all times when we were clean-shaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fourth-liner Casey Cizikas<\/a> is the organization\u2019s 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,\u201d 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 new GM Mathieu Darche<\/a>, a retired player with a pair of championship rings from his time in Tampa Bay\u2019s front office. Darche considers himself lucky to arrive after the Islanders won the draft lottery for the No. 1 pick and the chance to select defenseman Matthew Schaefer, who has already made a strong impression and on Thursday night became the youngest player in league history to record a point in his debut.<\/p>\n

Schaefer, for what it\u2019s worth, just turned 18 and is clean-shaven. Maybe he\u2019ll follow Sidney Crosby<\/a>\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/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

___<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n

Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Images from the New York Islanders\u2019 annual charity golf outing last month on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-203069","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\/203069","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=203069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}