{"id":84298,"date":"2025-12-30T04:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T04:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/84298\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T04:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T04:19:09","slug":"islanders-need-an-enforcer-but-beyond-just-dropping-gloves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/84298\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders need an enforcer &#8212; but beyond just dropping gloves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHICAGO \u2014 You can officially say the Islanders could use an enforcer after Matthew Schaefer was yet again targeted by an opposing player Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Too many teams have been taking liberties with the rookie superstar. Schaefer was lucky to avoid injury when Blue Jackets winger Mason Marchment stuck his knee out and tripped him Sunday, and it is natural to assume Marchment would have thought twice if the Islanders had someone who could make him answer for it.<\/p>\n<p>Except you know who didn\u2019t think twice in responding to Marchment by <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/28\/sports\/islanders-mat-barzal-ejected-after-swinging-stick-at-blue-jackets-in-wild-scene\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">whacking him with his stick <\/a>immediately after the play? That would be Mat Barzal, who last dropped gloves as a member of the WHL\u2019s Seattle Thunderbirds on March 29, 2016, and who responded despite one of the league\u2019s noted enforcers, Mathieu Olivier, being on the Columbus bench at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The Islanders need to protect Schaefer at all costs, and bringing in someone who consistently can fight \u2014 four Islanders have dropped gloves this year, but none of Tony DeAngelo, Anders Lee, Scott Mayfield or Kyle MacLean do so on a regular basis \u2014 may help with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 You can officially say the Islanders could use an enforcer after Matthew Schaefer was yet again&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,6821,10,539,319,431,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-84298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-islanders","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-columnists","15":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}