Isles Place Travis Hamonic on IR, Ryan Pulock Recalled

The Islanders were forced into yet another pair of roster moves today, placing defenseman Travis Hamonic on the injured reserve and recalling their top prospect, Ryan Pulock, from the AHL’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers.

Hamonic was unable to play in last nights victory over the Ottawa Senators and the team opted to replace him with the recently recalled Griffin Reinhart. Hamonic suffered an upper body injury in the previous game, also a victory against the Sens. To me, the promotion of Pulock to the NHL level means two things:

1) The Isles front office does not believe that Hamonic, Johnny Boychuk or Lubomir Visnovsky will be returning from injury any time soon. If the return of one of those players was imminent, the Isles would not need to promote another d-man, they had six healthy defensemen for last nights game in Ottawa, and they all seemed to play well.

2) The organization prefers Pulock to Reinhart. Reinhart played a steady game last night, he certainly did not do anything to provoke a knee jerk reaction within the organization, but if one of their prized prospects is going to have to make an extended stay in the NHL, it seems clear that they would prefer it to be Pulock, not Reinhart.

It seems unlikely that Garth Snow would keep Pulock on the NHL roster as a scratch, so I would assume he will either replace Brian Strait or Matt Donovan in the lineup or be returned to Bridgeport.

Pulock has never appeared in an NHL game, but he has had a tremendous season thus far for the Sound Tigers, sharing the team lead in goals with 8 in 20 games. Pulock has always been lauded for his tremendous point shot, and with Matt Donovan and Nick Leddy currently quarterbacking the Isles power play units, the team may be looking to add some punch to their man advantage.