Islanders: Best Player To Wear Number 49

Continuing our best of series, today we will look at the best player to wear number 49 for the New York Islanders in their history.

In the Islanders‘ history, seven players have worn the number 49 during their time with the team. The first to wear it was Vladimir Orszagh in 1998-1999. Over his first two seasons with the Isles, he played in 23 games and had two points in those games.

He’d switch to number 16 in his final season before taking a leap in production over in Nashville. After Orszagh, Robert Peterovicky wore the number in 2001. In 11 games with the Islanders, he scored zero points and averaged 3:26 of ice time.

Eric Godard wore the number next, and he had it the longest from 2002-2006. In three seasons with the Isles, he played in 107 games putting up just five points and 260 penalty minutes. He was a fighter, averaging just 3:48 of ice time per game.

In 2007-2008 Drew Fata wore the number for the Islanders. He played in just eight games with the Isles, putting up two points along the way. Mitch Fritz I think is my favorite stat line that I found while doing this exercise.

He wore the number in the 2008-2009 season, playing 20 games with the Islanders. In those 20 games, he put up no points and averaged 2:41 of ice time per night. Three times, he played under one minute of ice time in a game. His career-high was 7:04. What was the point of having him on the roster?

In 2011 and 2012, Rhett Rakhshani wore the number for seven games with the Islanders. He was a fourth-round pick in the 2006 draft. Those seven games would be the only time he saw in the NHL over his career.

Finally, the last player to wear the number was Justin Johnson. He wore it for two games in the 2013-2014 season. He had seven penalty minutes and was a -1 over that time with the Islanders.

Unfortunately, again, I don’t think we have a winner here today. That’s going to be a little more frequent as we make our way into the obscure numbers. We’ll give you a brief background on each player if we find that to be the case.