To keep puck, team turns over new leaf

When Doug Weight brings up the term “puck management” with his players, he worries that he starts “sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher — they’re not really listening.”

Having been in that chair as a player not long ago, Weight understands. But the Islanders coach wanted to emphasize his point recently, so he used some stats instead.

“They have to get it across in their mind that we usually double our turnovers in our losses,” Weight said Wednesday morning. “It’s a stat that was eye-opening for a lot of those guys. But I just cherry-picked 10 games that I liked, good and bad, and it was almost double to a number of turnovers [in losses].”

Weight offered the stat after he was asked about how the Islanders might slow down the Stars on Wednesday night at Barclays Center and his long answer was summed up by one central message: “Manage the damn puck.”

It proved prophetic as the Islanders came out sloppy and finished with 14 giveaways in a 5-2 loss at Barclays Center.

Only seven years removed from playing himself, Weight understood “it’s a different world” in the NHL today and that puck management might not be high on the priority list for everyone, but he had a larger point to prove before the game.

“It’s not selfishness on these players, it’s just the world we live in,” he said. “So they look at all these stats and they get in their head and they have their coaches that teach them how to make plays at the blue line and then we’re telling them opposite things.

“What I try to get across is I know everybody in the room wants to win first. That’s the first thing, it’s about the team. But secondly, it’s OK to think about your contract and your future and how many points you get. That’s setting goals for yourself. But what I try to prove to them is, this is going to feed both. Manage the damn puck.”

Johnny Boychuk returned to the ice after a three-game absence with a lower-body injury and recorded a teamhigh six shots in 17:40 of ice time. Dennis Seidenberg was the healthy scratch while Thomas Hickey missed a second straight game with an upper-body injury.

Anders Lee’s two third-period goals gave him 19 on the year, good for sole possession of third place in the NHL. Nikita Kucherov and Alex Ovechkin both have 21.