Geez. The Isles had to know that after losing three in a row, the Penguins were going to be looking for a win in a big way.

And the Penguins had to know the Isles have been struggling, pretty much from minute one of the season.

But I don’t think anyone saw last night’s 9-2 blowout coming. The Islanders gave up two hat tricks. Shockingly, it was Penguin Petr Sykora’s first career hat trick.

It was a brutal loss for the Isles. Well maybe not all of the Isles. Jon Sim, recently benched and waived by the Isles, had to take some pleasure in the loss.

It’s easy to point to goaltending as a huge factor in the loss, and while neither Joey McDonald nor Yann Danis were sharp, it’s tough facing 33 shots in the first two periods. In fact, McDonald’s been quite the work horse for the Islanders. Goalie Rick “Decade” DiPietro expects to be back in goal by Christmas, but with his high-flying goaltending, the Islanders might have given up 10 or 11 goals to Pittsburgh.

Islanders coach Scott Gordon has juggled lines a bit in the past game or two, while remaining committed to an aggressive forechecking system. Unfortunately, it seems to be putting a lot of pressure on his defensemen, who seem to get flustered when the opposing teams cross the blue line. Obviously, forwards need to be more defensively responsible, but maybe Gordon needs to play his blueline more conservatively, while keeping his forwards assertive. I know teams like Detroit play a five-man offense, where everyone on the ice is involved, but the Islander defensemen need to worry about helping out their goalie, whoever he is.

The brilliant play of the Flyers can be attributed to a players-only meeting held in mid-October.

According to Simon Gagne, the Flyers just talked about being more responsible at their respective positions.

I’ve always wanted to be in on a players-only meeting. I have a lot of questions:

• Who convenes it?
• Does anyone use a gavel?
• Is attendance taken?
• Does everyone rush to speak first so they’re the first person to say “We have to play better”?
• Was it awkward for Flyers coach John Stevens when they asked him to leave?
• Did Stevens think they were maybe planning some kind of surprise party for him?

Also, the Flyers are saying they would sign Mats Sundin, which is weird given their depth down the middle and how well they’re playing without him. He might be really good in players-only meetings, though. That could be the X-factor here.

Also, Apparently the Wild were interested in Sundin. I guess Sundin, who’s ruled out Minnesota as possible NHL destination, was scared off when management kept saying, “But you’re cool with not playing offense here, right? We’re looking for someone to just hang back all the time.”

Don’t worry if you missed last night’s Blackhawks-Senators game. Apparently a lot of Canadians did, too, as the game was shown on the not-widely-available TSN2.

Can you imagine if the Blackhawks still didn’t broadcast their home games? This might have been a game practically unseen by anyone outside of the United Center.

Obviously, the Senators didn’t want their fans to miss any scoring. They lost 2-0 to Chicago, helping goalie Cristobal Huet notch his first shutout as a Blackhawk.

Also, two quick things:

• Stars owner Tom Hicks says co-GM Brett Hull isn’t about to be moved out of his co-GM slot. Obviously Hicks has been contemplating which looks worse: keeping Hull in an unusual management arrangement where Hull made a pretty awful personnel move or Hicks admitting he made a mistake giving the co-GM job to someone with little to no experience.
• While there’s definitely a certain black humor in the absurdity of Joe Sakic’s freak snowblower injury, I hope this isn’t the end of his career. How sad for such a great career to end on such a succession of awful notes. I would love for Sakic to get back, even if only for the last month of this season, and play one final block of Sakic-quality hockey. Also, the NHL should probably go ahead and confiscate all player snowblowers and lawn mowers and weed wackers and blenders. It’s just too dangerous.

While I applaud Columbus’ ingenuity in allowing fans to pay for tickets in installments, what does it say that you need an installment plan to have a few days or nights out at a hockey game? The Blue Jackets play in Ohio, a severely depressed state. The fans are there, but they’re not going to spend around $20 a ticket (plus overpriced food and parking) to see an 11-13-3 team with one genuine star.

If the Blue Jackets really want to get fans into their arena, they should let the fans sign up for the one-on-one conferences coach Ken Hitchcock is now conducting with the team. For $30, you get five minutes with Hitchcock. Maybe he’ll critique you. Maybe you’ll just make awkward small talk. And for $50, he’ll berate you. I think there’s real money to be made. In fact, if they can get him, I bet Columbus could make some serious scratch by letting fans talk to the super candid Barry Melrose for three minutes. He’s got some downtime before he returns to ESPN. It’s win-win. Except that Melrose has no connection to the Blue Jackets or Ohio. That might be a better promotion for Tampa.

The Maple Leafs don’t have a ton going for them but one thing they do have is cap space.

According to Damien Cox, a lot of NHL GMs are nervous about the global economy and about future caps, and that might make them open to dumping a huge contract and some picks for the peace of mind of not having that huge contract on their books.

Of course, then the Leafs are capped out, so I’m not sure if this is an ideal situation for new GM Brian Burke.

Of course, the 2009-10 cap is confirmed to at least stay the same, so I can’t imagine any of the contracts being hypothetically dumped would be very good ones. They’ll probably be guys like Jason Blake.

Oh wait. Toronto already has his contract.

Obviously, cap space is always a great option, but I don’t see an NHL-wide doomsday scenario where teams around the NHL need to unload high-performing stars. I think it’s more likely teams will want to dump under-performing stars, but that’s always true.

Are things finally turning around for the Blues?

Nothing against their two game winning streak, but it’s really too soon to say. But things finally seem to be clicking for St. Louis, in a way I don’t think we’ve seen since the first half of last season. This is the first time in a long time when the news around the Blues isn’t swirling around injuries.

For instance, B.J. Crombeen, a waiver pick-up for the Blues, had a hat trick against the Predators last night. That’s pretty nice.

Goalie Manny Legace has been in net for both wins in the Blues two-game streak, and while he’s hardly been stellar,he’s been just good enough. This gives Legace some confidence and avoids any kind of goalie controversy with “backup” Chris Mason.

A tiny, sad little rainstorm seems to follow the Blues around, right over their heads. It’s nice to see some good things happening for the team.

Also, there’s a weird story out of Minnesota, with Tobin Wright, an agent, getting banned from the Xcel Energy Center, allegedly for refusing to testify against Willie Mitchell, who is still trying to get lockout money from the Wild. Michael Russo has the whole, sorted story.

We always talk about the NHL coaching carousel but some coaches do seem to evolve. Chicago coach Joel Quenneville, who always seemed a little too player friendly to me, has taken to benching players and it seems to be working.

Colorado’s Tony Granato, who replaced Quenneville in Colorado after being replaced by Quenneville (an extreme version of the carousel), seems to be more effective in his second stint in Colorado.

Not that you can tell from Colorado’s record or playing. But the players seem to like him.

Paul Maurice just boomeranged back to Carolina and according to Jim Kelley, it might have been more of a financial move than a strategic one. Toronto is still paying part of Paul Maurice’s severance package, giving Carolina the ability to afford him.

Two-Line Pass had a great look at some better coaching choices for Carolina.

Outgoing Carolina coach Peter Laviolette could find himself back there in just a few years, though. Assuming there’s still a franchise in Carolina. Or ownership doesn’t go with a self-coaching model. I bet a traffic light over the bench would be even cheaper than a coach.

Over in Chicago, Corey Crawford, the highly regarded (by the Blackhawks, anyway) goalie is finally getting some playing time.

Well he’s not really playing. He’s really backing-up. But still. He’s with the club, waiting to crack the lineup and live up to his one-time billing as Chicago’s so-called goalie of the future. Of course, during Chicago’s Patrick Lalime years, we thought Chicago’s goalie of the future hadn’t been born yet.

The good news for Crawford is that with Nikolai Khabibulin’s groin strain, he’s only got one goalie in front of him.

If I’m Cristobal Huet, I’m going to ask someone to taste my food and start my car.

Also, how funny is it that there’s this huge goalie controversy in Chicago, Khabibulin finally seems to win the job, and then his groin flares up? Funny to me. Not so funny to him, I guess.

The Kings are probably one of the NHL’s bigger surprises this season. The team has a young, almost anonymous roster, yet somehow the Kings are still in the thick of things.

Now, with billions (OK,millions) of dollars in cap space, the team has to start considering if it wants to grab some high-priced talent to make a push into the playoffs.

Goaltending would obviously be a priority, and the best goalie available is Chicago’s Nikolai Khabibulin. I haven’t heard much about the Kings being interested, though.

Coach Terry Murray also concedes his top line could use more of a finisher. The top line (Anze Kopitar between Dustin Brown and Kyle Calder) has a combined 15 goals on the season.

So yeah. I think the top line could use something. Alexander Frolov, who leads the Kings with 10 goals, would be a logical insider candidate, but he’s a huge defensive liability. In fact, he was benched for the second half of Tuesday’s third period loss to Phoenix.

I don’t think anyone in the Kings organization thought the team would be as successful as it’s been and now they really don’t know what to do. They can try and upgrade the team and possibly ruin the chemistry or they can stand pat and then find themselves just out of the playoffs. In a lot of ways, things would have been much easier if they had just been an awful team.

Also, TV ratings always confuse me, but here are the local ratings for NHL teams. In general, the local ratings are up for more than a third of the league. Phoenix and Tampa ratings are both up since last year, which surprised me. Maybe the Sun Belt experiment wasn’t a total failure?

The NHL suspending Sean Avery is not about the term “sloppy seconds.”

Is that term any more offensive than Michael Nylander dropping the s-bomb on national TV in the middle of the day? Or are we supposed to believe the NHL is suddenly concerned about players portraying women as possessions?

Or better yet, are we supposed to believe the NHL finds sexist language more dangerous than elbows to the head? Actually, when I was a kid and I would tease my sister, Mother PuckUpdate would tell me words could hurt as much as elbows to the head. I don’t think I understood what she meant until now.

But let’s just say for the sake of argument that the NHL is trying to purge sexist language and behavior from the league. Scott Burnside reports Avery got into a fight with a Bruins fan last month, complete with Avery cursing and directing derogatory remarks toward a woman. That did not result in any disciplinary action. Did Avery’s comments toward that woman not warrant a suspension because Avery’s comments weren’t caught on camera or because she’s not a celebrity? Or, perhaps more likely, is this suspension not about sexist language?

Brett Hull, the co-GM more interested in bringing Avery to Dallas this summer, is already distancing himself from Avery (and I pray and I pray that I’m never in a situation where Hull is saying he thinks I crossed some kind of line; that’s like Plaxico Burress telling you to be more responsible with guns).

The Dallas players, who never warmed to Avery, aren’t rallying around him.

There are only two ways this mess makes sense to me:

1. The Stars want to unload Avery without taking a cap hit so they’re blowing this incident up and hoping conduct “detrimental to the league or game of hockey” is enough to void the contract.
2. The league realizes bad news sells better than good news (the Avery story has cracked ESPN) and it’s blowing up the incident to promote the league. You have Avery being controversial and a celebrity’s reputation being sullied; that’s a recipe for eyeballs. And as far as controversies go, this is a great one for the NHL. Slightly shocking but not horrifying, like Todd Bertuzzi’s attack on Steve Moore.

If the NHL is suddenly interested in creating an inviting environment for men and women, I hope they’ll not only continue to investigate the many teams that have homophobic chants in their arenas and stairwells, but also perhaps finally take action on it. Or are we to believe one player making inane remarks is somehow more threatening than hundreds of people chanting something offensive?

Also, I’ve seen OLD SCHOOL about 50 times and I never realized Elisha Cuthbert was in it.