Mathew Barzal “still has a chance for opening night,” even as the Islanders opened training camp Thursday morning without the star centerman, general manager Mathieu Darche said.
Darche confirmed the absence is related to a left kneecap injury Barzal suffered two seasons ago.
Barzal played 81 games last season while managing the issue behind the scenes, but it flared up a couple of weeks ago.
“We’re playing the long game here,” Darche said. “We’ll have to manage it all the time. He did have an injury in his knee and that’s fine. There’s a lot of players that manage stuff every day throughout their career. That’s just something we’re gonna manage.
“We had a meeting after the physical [Wednesday], meeting with the doctor, with Mathew, with his agent and let’s make sure we control that information and hopefully we’ll be good to go.”
Barzal’s knee also flared up ahead of World Championships in the spring, leading him to pull out.
Darche said that Barzal had a few treatments over the summer before the issue returned “a little bit more in the last couple weeks.”
The Islanders said Wednesday that Barzal wouldn’t skate for two weeks, a timeline that runs into the Sept. 30 opener at the Maple Leafs.
Darche said that two weeks was an approximation, thus the possibility he plays in Toronto.
Nevertheless, that still appears a long shot.
Even if Barzal returns to the ice, skating is not the same thing as being ready to play.
The Islanders were otherwise healthy Thursday, with all of Semyon Varlamov, Pierre Engvall, Kyle Palmieri and Alexander Romanov — the foursome who spent most of last season rehabbing together — on the ice with the first group.
