October in the NHL is a spooky season of jump-scares. The Tampa Bay Lightning, for example, have won just one game out of six. Eek! The Calgary Flames, after taking their opener, have since gone down a six-game house of horrors. HELP! The Red Wings have ripped off five straight wins, which feels a little like the part where they think they’ve killed the monster but the movie still has 30 minutes left. It’s not something to really try to make sense of, these early blazes and sputters.
But beginnings still matter, and not just because you get as many points for a win in the fall as you do in the spring. Every team right now is making a first impression, setting its own expectations for what’s to come. And in his first few games with a New York Islanders squad on the threshold of a new era, 18-year-old Matthew Schaefer has given Isles-watchers a credible argument that things will get better from here on out.
There are basically two categories of No. 1 pick: the ones hyped as franchise saviors from the get-go, and the less spectacular kids who just happen to be one of the top couple of players in their class. Schaefer was the latter, a bit of a comedown from Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini in the previous two years. Part of that is because he’s a defenseman who wasn’t putting up eye-popping scoring stats, and part of it’s because he hadn’t actually played a lot of games in the season before getting drafted, breaking his collarbone at the 2025 World Juniors shortly after recovering from mono. But Schaefer has weathered a lot of adversity for a teenager, and there was no real doubt about who the Islanders would select when they won the draft lottery. The former Erie Otter, when healthy, showed himself to be the kind of skater who could command the game at both ends, denying opposing attacks and moving the puck up the ice to create plays for his teammates.
That Schaefer looked like a fully developed talent when playing among his age peers is par for the course for a No. 1 pick. Where he’s caught people off-guard is just how quickly he’s fit into the NHL, especially considering how little hockey he’d played recently. A promising preseason quickly earned him the trust of head coach Patrick Roy, and on an Isles defense packed with veterans, it’s Schaefer who’s received more time on the ice than any other skater through his first six career games, earning a point for himself every single time out. Though his early contributions came in losses, the Islanders have rebounded to a 3-3 record, most recently taking care of business against the Sharks on Tuesday night.
Schaefer’s first career goal, where he flew into a crease scrum to take a loose puck nobody else noticed, was irrelevant to the game’s final score. But last night’s held up as the game-winner in a 4-3 contest. You maybe don’t want to give too much credit for pulling it off against the Sharks, who are only a notch above OHL competition, but I love the confidence on display. When Mat Barzal fended off a bit of pressure in the Isles’ own zone, he and Schaefer started an attack where the younger player flew through center ice, crossed the blue line, passed it out to the wing, and skated straight in on net. A rookie defenseman staying that deep in the attacking zone could have been a disaster, but Schaefer stood his ground in one of the most dangerous spots on the ice, and he reaped his reward when his team’s second chance fell to his stick. That level of surehandedness and aggression is encouraging evidence that Schaefer’s ceiling is somewhere in the stratosphere.
That’s not to say the Islanders are in good shape. Ilya Sorokin doesn’t look like the guy he was in net three or four seasons ago. Schaefer’s heavy workload says as much about the team’s lack of depth as the kid’s skill. A lackluster forward group from last year mostly just looks a year older. So this three-game win streak is nothing to hang your hat on, but I will declare this much about the Islanders: If you’re a fan struggling to find a reason to go back to an arena that felt very blah last season, now you get to watch Matthew Schaefer skate 22 minutes a night.
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