Islanders: JG Pageau Had Hand Surgery

Today, Islanders General Manager Lou Lamoriello spoke with the media and we got a few juicy nuggets as expected. One of my biggest takeaways was that JG Pageau did indeed need surgery and had a successful one yesterday.

According to Lou Lamoriello, Pageau, and Anders Lee too for that matter will be good to go for training camp. Can we just talk about how much of a warrior Pageau is for a minute here?

While playing with an injury that required surgery, Pager was downright awesome for the Islanders in the playoffs. Sure, you can make the case that he wasn’t at his best in the Lightning series, I’d agree but let’s look at the numbers as a whole.

In 19 games, Pageau had 13 points (3 goals, 10 assists) while averaging 17:10 of ice time per game. The best part? He won 54.8% of his faceoffs. The man was nearly a 55% faceoff guy with a broken hand! I mean come on, that’s unreal.

He didn’t have a point in the Lightning series, so that means 13 points in 12 games to start the playoffs. Not bad for a “third line center”.

But even when not at his best, the Islanders relied heavily on him to win big defensive faceoffs. Isolating just this series, he won 57% of his faceoffs. Do you need any more clarification on why Lou Lamoriello traded for this guy?

Without JG Pageau healthy and missing their Captain, Anders Lee was a huge blow for this team. Certainly one would imagine that they would’ve had a better shot in the playoffs if both of those guys were healthy for this unit.

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Regardless, I still can’t get over that this man clearly had something wrong with his hand and was winning key faceoff after key faceoff. Five more years of JG Pageau sounds pretty solid to me.