{"id":414901,"date":"2026-01-18T12:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T12:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/414901\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T12:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T12:39:12","slug":"islanders-vs-flames-matinee-news-in-praise-of-ilya-bo-still-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/414901\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders vs. Flames Matinee News: In praise of Ilya; Bo still home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I am still reeling from that Ilya Sorokin performance on Thursday in Edmonton. Ye gods, that was a masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">But anyway, on to the next one. The Islanders are in Calgary for an afternoon meeting, and David Rittich will start against his former team (though as he noted, there aren\u2019t a lot of former teammates in the other room).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Flames are a couple steps above the Western basement and seven points below the final wild card spot. They\u2019ve been better-ish of late (5-5 in their last 10) but are still expected to basically tread water for the lottery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Here\u2019s a selection of practice media availabilities from yesterday, including Tony DeAngelo noting that Adam Pelech \u201cmay look like a stay-at-home defenseman, but he breaks out like an offensive defenseman,\u201d and Andrew Gross asking Czech David Rittich if he\u2019s \u201ca sentimental guy\u201d as he returns to Calgary:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Today\u2019s opponent: Presented without comment, other than to be rude earworm for your afternoon:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/scores\/2026-01-16\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Last night\u2019s scores<\/a> included Carolina thumping Florida NINE to one and Tampa Bay finally losing, but still getting a regulation point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am still reeling from that Ilya Sorokin performance on Thursday in Edmonton. Ye gods, that was a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[51091,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-414901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-bits-o-islanders-news","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414901","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=414901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}