![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775655275_97_image.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nThe play that exemplified best why Kyle Palmieri is the Islanders\u2019 nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to the sport might not have resulted in a season-ending injury after all.<\/p>\n
Provided the team can somehow qualify for the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Professional Hockey Writers\u2019 Association, whose members vote upon the award, announced the nominees for all 32 teams on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a long road and the comeback is not quite complete for me,\u201d Palmieri said in his first public comments since suffering a torn ACL in his left knee on Nov. 28. \u201cHopefully in the next couple of weeks we\u2019ll see how the season unfolds. Getting back on the ice was a big step a couple of weeks ago. As long as I keep progressing, I\u2019m definitely not putting it out of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old Smithtown product was injured in the second period of an eventual 4-3 shootout loss to the Flyers at UBS Arena. Palmieri fell to the ice behind the Flyers\u2019 net clutching his left knee after colliding with Jamie Drysdale.<\/p>\n
Play continued and Palmieri was eventually able to drag himself up and limp toward the Islanders\u2019 bench. On the way, he stripped Emil Andrae of the puck to set up Emil Heineman\u2019s goal at 5:42 to start a rally from a three-goal deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said it should win an ESPY for toughest play of the year,\u201d Mathew Barzal said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of the most impressive things I\u2019ve seen for sure,\u201d defenseman Adam Pelech said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s funny just because it\u2019s so Palms. It just really epitomizes him as a player and a person. He has no quit. It was an all-time tough play. Unfortunately, he sustained a pretty bad injury but very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmieri called it an honor to be nominated for the Masterton but added the moment against the Flyers was simultaneously \u201ccool\u201d and one of his \u201cworst.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat night after hearing what the doctor had said, that weekend was a little bit of a blur,\u201d Palmieri said. \u201cBut for how viral that clip went and the amount of people that reached out and even since then just random fans seeing them on the street, it\u2019s cool to have a moment like that to remember. There\u2019s some bittersweetness to the severity of the injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Islanders have had three Masterton winners: Ed Westfall (1977), Mark Fitzpatrick (1992) and Robin Lehner (2019).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tAndrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John\u2019s and MLB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The play that exemplified best why Kyle Palmieri is the Islanders\u2019 nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,5470,3328,159,5190,5189,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-547433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-islanders","10":"tag-li-athletes","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-islanders","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkislanders","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116369351230779179","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547433","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=547433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}