{"id":387468,"date":"2026-01-04T14:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T14:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/387468\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T14:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T14:30:15","slug":"mathew-barzal-sure-sounds-like-an-islanders-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/387468\/","title":{"rendered":"Mathew Barzal sure sounds like an Islanders leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, when the Islanders were heaping praise on Mathew Barzal for standing up for Matthew Schaefer by <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/30\/sports\/islanders-mathew-barzal-explains-his-retaliatory-two-handed-slash\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">slashing Mason Marchment<\/a> after the Columbus winger stuck a knee out to trip the rookie, my mind wandered back to a conversation I had nearly two years ago with Barzal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the time as now, the narrative of Barzal taking a leadership role was circulating. He told me, in so many words, that he was sick of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like people have been saying that for years now,\u201d Barzal said then. \u201cI try to lead on the ice. Try to just be myself off the ice. \u2026 I think the guys in this room know hockey\u2019s a big part of my life. I\u2019m a student of the game. I\u2019m kinda getting tired of the whole, \u2018Can he be a leader?\u2019 I just try to be me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like I take this game really seriously. Hopefully that just allows guys to see that, hey, out on the ice early, working out, just little stuff. I don\u2019t come to the rink every day and try to consciously think I need to be a leader.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, when the Islanders were heaping praise on Mathew Barzal for standing up for Matthew Schaefer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[75619,38006,394,385,99,362,358],"class_list":{"0":"post-387468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-mathew-barzal","9":"tag-matthew-schaefer","10":"tag-new-york-islanders","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-columnists","14":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}