Nino Niederreiter improvement catches eye of New York Islanders
Nino Niederreiter was one of the hottest topics at the start of last season’s draft entry in 2010.
He is 18-years old, as he begins his second year in the National Hockey League. He came up with a decent performance in the last two seasons in North America where he caught the eyes of many.
His brilliant game was noted and this is the reason why he became the highest Swiss player to be drafted into the NHL, at number five draft pick.
However, he was given time to mature and was sent to Portland Winterhawks in the Western Hockey League at the start of the 2010-11 season. His time there was among one of his most productive seasons, as he played in 55 games and was able to score a huge
41 goals.
Not only did he have a high scoring level, he was able to bag 29 assists along with 67 penalty minutes. One thing that the New York Islanders, General Manager, Garth Snow, will be looking at is Niederreiter’s statistics during the course of the postseason.
He was able to score a total of 27 points, out of which, 9 were through goals and the remaining 18 through assists. They won the first game 4-3 and were on track for winning the Finals and making their way into the Cup Finals.
However, this didn’t prove to be the case as they lost the next four consecutive games to Kootenay Ice. However, hopes of any comebacks by the Winterhawks ended with a recent 4-1 defeat.
"I was OK, but it was a tough ending for us", Niederreiter said. "I thought we had an unbelievable team and we probably could have went further. But in the end, I've got to give Kootenay credit for the way they played”.
Niederreiter also opened his account in the National Hockey League, as he scored the goal against the Washington Capitals in a game that they lost 2-1 in the end on the 13th of October 2010. He played a total of nine games during the season for
the Islanders.
There are still two seasons during which, he can play at the junior hockey level and so far he has done pretty well at the level. In two seasons that he has played so far, he has piled up a total of 130 points while playing in 120 games.
Out these, 77 have been scored through goals and 53 through assists that shows the diversity of their players. This player is bound to get better and once he is done with his junior career, he will surely be a strong contender for a spot in the Islanders
squad.
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