Alexander Romanov faces 6-8 months out with a torn right ACL, and the New York Islanders just lost a regular from their blue line.
The news landed Wednesday, one day after the 26-year-old played 13:20 in a 5-2 loss to the Rangers on Tuesday night.
Run the timeline forward. A defenseman who dressed for all three games this season will likely finish 2026-27 with exactly that many.
Three games. For a player whose previous season was already wrecked by injury, it's a cruel second act.
It's like paying for a season pass and getting through the turnstile three times before the gates lock for good.
And the bill keeps coming. Romanov carries a $6,250,000 cap hit, the kind of number a front office expects to see on the ice in October.
Mathieu Darche now has to decide how that money gets handled, and whether the fix for this hole is already in the building.
Matthew Schaefer's workload is about to get even heavier
So who eats the minutes? Tuesday's deployment already tells the story. Matthew Schaefer, all of 19, led Islanders defensemen at 25:03.
Adam Pelech was next at 20:56 and also piled up seven penalty minutes on a frustrating night on the road.
Logan Stanley logged 19:21 on a $1,500,000 cap hit. Anthony DeAngelo, Ryan Pulock and Romanov filled out the six.
The injured defenseman finished last among that group in ice time, so the raw minutes can be shuffled. Losing a body from a group already leaning this hard on a teenager is the real problem.
Here's where I'd pump the brakes. Piling even more on a 19-year-old over a full season is a bad idea, and Peter DeBoer has to resist the easy button.
Schaefer already has two assists through three games, one of them on the power play. The kid can handle big nights. Big months are a different conversation.
The good news? Ilya Sorokin owns a .968 save percentage with a shutout, and that 6-0 win over New Jersey showed what this team looks like when the crease holds.
Semyon Varlamov sits at .864 in the other net. That gap matters a lot more when the blue line in front of him just got thinner.
The Islanders are 1-2-0, still winless on the road and sixth in the Metropolitan Division.
Next up is a home date with Chicago on Thursday. The Blackhawks arrive at 1-3-0 with a -8 goal differential, a soft landing on paper.
Then come Tampa Bay on Saturday and Vancouver on Tuesday to close out a three-game homestand.
That stretch will show whether the Islanders have enough on the back end without Romanov, or whether Darche gets on the phone before the road trip to Ottawa and Toronto.
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Should Mathieu Darche trade for a defenseman before the Islanders head out on the road?
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