New York Islanders Daily: Barry Trotz Praises Josh Ho-Sang

The New York Islanders new coach, Barry Trotz, had some insightful words on prospect Josh Ho-Sang, hopefully giving him a boost of confidence.

It’s been an odd tenure with the New York Islanders for Josh Ho-Sang. Between the alarm clock saga, his initial success in 2016-2017 with the big club, and then his scapegoat role in 2017-2018 the last four years have been rather interesting, to say the least.

At the NHL level, he’s a half a point per game player, so the hate always was confusing for me, but now he has the confidence of his new head coach.

Barry Trotz spoke to the legend, Stan Fischler, about numerous things with the team. One of the topics was Ho-Sang and he had a ton of positives to say about the 22-year-old lightning rod.

“Josh has to be part of our future,” the coach asserted. “He’s a talent who needs to be understood better than he has been. In this case, Lou will be good. My belief is that the kid has been misunderstood because he looks at the game differently.“But his skills will fit into how we play. You’ve got to be patient with him and understand that he was frustrated in the past. Josh has talent and speed. Now we’ve got to have him make plays at the right time.”

Now, this is what we want to hear from a coach. Finally, it sounds like somebody is willing to work with his skillset instead of trying to completely remodel him. Ho-Sang absolutely should be a part of the Islanders future, he just might struggle to make the team right now.

There’s an influx of veteran forwards, and he might have to wait until 2019-2020 before he gets his shot playing every day. I’d hate to see that, but that might be what we’re looking at with a number of stop-gap vets.

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