Feb. 21: Cholowski passed through unclaimed, PuckPedia reports. He’ll presumably be removed from the Islanders’ roster in the coming days.
Feb. 20: The Islanders have placed defenseman Dennis Cholowski on waivers, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. He’ll head down to AHL Bridgeport if he clears.
New York is set to come out of the break with an open roster spot, but there’s a high likelihood of Scott Mayfield and Ryan Pulock coming off standard IR and LTIR, respectively, before Sunday’s game against the Stars. Assigning Cholowski to the minors tomorrow or losing him to another team will open the second spot they need to activate both.
Cholowski, who turned 27 earlier this week, has seen his most extended NHL usage in a half-decade this season. Injuries on the Long Island blue-line have meant Cholowski, who began the year as the Isles’ seventh defenseman, has played in 33 of 55 games. Minutes have been hard to come by – his 12:48 ATOI is the lowest among New York defensemen with multiple appearances – but he’s been effective in them with a 3-7–10 scoring line and a plus-one rating. He’s far from physically involved, recording 30 blocks and only five hits, but the 2016 first-rounder has been a decent depth puck-mover in his return to semi-regular NHL minutes.
Unfortunately for him, how the Islanders responded to injuries to Pulock and Noah Dobson muddied his role down the stretch. They picked up a trio of puck-movers – Adam Boqvist, Tony DeAngelo, and Scott Perunovich – who all have more experience or a higher ceiling than Cholowski. It’s not a huge surprise the 6’2″ lefty is the odd man out upon Pulock’s return instead of any of their new pickups.
Cholowski has seen AHL action in all six of his professional seasons leading up to the 2024-25 campaign. If he clears, he’ll land a seventh, but there’s a decent chance a team looking for a cheap depth option makes a claim. He’s a pending unrestricted free agent on a league minimum contract, so there’s zero financial risk if he doesn’t pan out.
A claim would mean Cholowski moves to his fifth NHL organization. Since being drafted 20th overall by the Red Wings and spending three seasons in Detroit, he’s made stops with the Capitals and Kraken in addition to his time in Long Island. Cholowski initially landed with the Isles in free agency in 2022 after being non-tendered by Seattle.
Probably one of the worst decisions in Holland’s career was trading out of the 16th overall pick at the 2016 draft to take Cholowski at 20th. Chychrun dropped out of the top 15 despite being 4th among NA skaters and the highest rated defender in the draft, and Holland dealt the pick to get rid of Datsyuk’s remaining contract year (so he could sign Frans Nielsen and Steve Ott). The smug look on his face said just about everything you needed to know about the state of the Red Wings at that time, who haven’t been back to the playoffs since.
And Nielsen was terrible
In retrospect Holland was a terrible GM when it came to evaluating talent and this draft along with the one in 2018 where he drafted Zadina over Hughes clearly exemplifiy this issue.
He hung on Devellno’s coattails and Illitch’s heavy spending to cover up his deficiencies.
The Isles have used 13 different defensemen in at least one game this season.