The New York Islanders have announced that forward Hudson Fasching has been activated off of the team’s injured reserve list in advance of tonight’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers. The move leaves the team with a full 23-man roster.
Fasching has been out since a January 18th contest against the Boston Bruins due to a lower-body injury. He will in all likelihood resume his role on the Islanders’ fourth line, filling the role now-injured Cal Clutterbuck has long occupied next to Casey Cizikas and Matt Martin.
The 27-year-old has been a nice find for the Islanders this season and has set a new career-high in NHL games played with 19. While he hasn’t scored much (he has just three goals and five points) he’s provided head coach Lane Lambert with the kind of physicality and energy the organization has long valued in its bottom sixers.
Fasching arrived in the Islanders organization over the summer, signing a one-year, two-way contract. The prior season, Fasching had served as the captain of the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners for the Arizona Coyotes organization and scored 37 points in 51 AHL games.
Instead of serving as a leader and valuable power forward for the Islanders’ AHL affiliate, Fasching has firmly placed himself in the NHL mix as a depth forward and has likely earned himself another NHL deal in the process.
For players on the NHL-AHL bubble, life can sometimes lack stability as teams generally view these players as expendable. While Fasching’s play hasn’t changed that overall reality, it has so far changed his reality as he’s proved he could have more value to an NHL team than many might have believed a year ago.