{"id":472973,"date":"2026-02-26T12:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472973\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T12:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:52:10","slug":"islanders-challenge-in-pulling-off-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472973\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders challenge in pulling off deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The next few games are some of the most important of the Islanders\u2019 season, which feels strange to write after the NHL has spent the past few weeks in hibernation.<\/p>\n<p>It is true, though, and for a simple reason: There are five games left until the trade deadline, and the Islanders <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/02\/25\/sports\/the-pressing-questions-facing-islanders-with-post-olympics-sprint-to-finish-set-to-begin\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">are returning to their season<\/a> with a four-point cushion over the Blue Jackets.<\/p>\n<p>General manager Mathieu Darche could justifiably go any of three ways at the deadline: buying, standing pat or doing some combination of buying and selling.<\/p>\n<p>Being full-on sellers would be highly unlikely barring some sort of catastrophe over the next week, and the buying-and-selling route doesn\u2019t feel too probable either, unless a perfect deal falls into Darche\u2019s lap for Jean-Gabriel Pageau. At this point, the Islanders are far more likely to view Pageau and Anders Lee as self-rentals at the deadline, and make a decision on extending them at some point down the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next few games are some of the most important of the Islanders\u2019 season, which feels strange to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,3521,122,2595,3328,159,5190,5189,4,548,2541,43,336],"class_list":["post-472973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-islanders","tag-hockey","tag-inside-the-islanders","tag-islanders","tag-mathieu-darche","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkislanders","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-trade-deadline","tag-post-sports-newsletters","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116137030202538928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}