If Patrick Roys three games as coach of the Islanders were the first three games of the season, you would be optimistic.

After the false start a couple weeks ago, everyone is being appropriately careful about what they say publicly. But it is becoming one of the sports most poorly kept secrets that Benoit Desrosiers is going to join Patrick Roy on Long Island.

Noah Dobsons All-Star case, summed up in a single game, could look a whole lot worse than it did on Thursday. Skating on the top pair with Alexander Romanov, Dobson recorded 26:01 time on ice to lead the Islanders.

Noah Dobson, Bo Horvat and Brock Nelson all had strong cases to go to All-Star weekend in Toronto.

They will be back in action on Wednesday against the Penguins the first of two home games before a four-game trip.

The Islanders took a circuitous route to the NHLs Christmas break, but theyve ended up in about as good a destination as they could have hoped.

The course charted by Noah Dobson over the first five seasons of an NHL career that has reached stardom this season started with sitting in the press box by design.

As for this year, the cumulative results for Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov, over 206 minutes 27 seconds this season heading into Tuesdays game, were not just good, but the best of any Isles pair this year: 56.94 percent of expected goals, 73.33 percent of the actual goals, 55.56 percent of high-danger chances.

After recording two assists in the Islanders' win over Anaheim, Noah Dobson is ahead of a point-per-game pace, with 29 in 28 games. If this is the player the 23-year-old Dobson is now, he needs to be in the same sentence as the likes of Cale Makar, Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes and Miro Heiskanen. Which means he will need to be paid like it.