NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Despite the stated desire from coach Pete DeBoer to be careful with Matthew Schaefer’s workload, the 19-year-old’s minutes are up by over 90 seconds per game from last season, enough that he’s now fourth in the league at an eye-popping 26:13 per night.
That, however, is not an issue for either Schaefer or the Islanders, albeit for different reasons.
For Schaefer’s part, he simply likes playing, feels his body is fine and is never going to ask for fewer minutes.
And for the Islanders’ part, DeBoer pointed at the breakdown of those minutes — namely, taking Schaefer off the penalty kill this season — as the team’s way of managing him, rather than the raw number.
“I think 26 minutes isn’t necessarily all the same type of minutes,” DeBoer said after the Islanders practiced on Monday at Bridgestone Arena. “If you’re defending all night, if you’re killing penalties, those are different minutes [than] power play and offensive situations, things like that.”
Through Schaefer’s first year and change in the NHL, there’s been little reason to suspect that his workload has had a massive effect on his day-to-day output. He’s yet to experience an extended slump in the NHL, and doesn’t tend to fade late in games, even when the Islanders lean on him heavily.
To the extent there’s a worry, it’s less about the here and now and more that the mileage Schaefer accumulates as a teenager could affect him in the future.
“Obviously sometimes [DeBoer] will check in and be like, make sure you’re resting the body, taking the option you need and things like that,” Schaefer told The Post. “At the end of the day, I think he knows I love to be out there. I’m still young, so try to burn some energy out there. It’s fun.”
The Islanders moved Matias Maccelli (lower body) and Calum Ritchie (lower body) to injured reserve, clearing two roster spots with which they called up Kashawn Aitcheson and Pierre Engvall as paper transactions.
Neither Aitcheson nor Engvall are expected to play or even to join the team, but adding their cap hits allows the Islanders to get closer to the salary cap ceiling and maximize their long-term injury pool, if and when Alexander Romanov is added to LTIR. Paper transactions in the opposite direction — that is, sending a player down on paper to maximize cap accrual — has been legislated out of the NHL, but doing so with a call-up is still allowed.
Moving to IR doesn’t affect the time frame for Maccelli or Ritchie, as both have already missed the required seven days.
Maccelli is expected to begin skating on his own Tuesday.
