It must be hockey season ‘cause the ice is down, teams are practicing and prospects are trying to shine bright enough to earn roster spots for the 2026-27 NHL season. 

On Sunday afternoon, at the RWJBarnabas Health Hockey House, the New Jersey Devils prospects took on the New York Islanders prospects in a scrimmage where the final score wasn’t the point. Rather, the focus was on which prospects showed enough potential to possibly put themselves in the conversation for NHL playing time. 

Among those with the most eyes on them were New Jersey’s Seamus Casey (defenseman), Lenni Hameenaho (forward) and 2024 first-rounder defenseman Anton Silaev. 

For the Islanders, the noteworthy prospects going into the game were: Cole Eiserman (forward), Daniil Prokhorov (forward) and Victor Eklund (forward).

Jakub Malek started in net for the Devils while Joshua Kotai manned the pipes for the Islanders. 

The story of the first period was the skating and play of Silaev, who was easily the biggest player on either team. He’s six-foot-seven inches tall and 211lbs. 

“In my first American game, big emotion,” Silaev said. “Pre-game, I’m big stress and first shift, physical body…no stress and good game.”

“I mean, if I’m tall, he’s a giant,” Diotte quipped about Silaev. “He’s really big. He skates really well. I mean, he’s an amazing player. He’s gonna have a great career. For his size, I never saw somebody skating like that, so it’s pretty impressive. I’ll take a couple of things from his bag and just try to improve my game.”

His swift skating, coupled with his smooth stickhandling, made him a problem for the opponents every time he touched the ice. And he wasn’t afraid to get physical either, as he obliterated the Isles’ Tomas Poletin toward the end of the first period with a board-shaking hit behind the Devils’ bench. 

“I kind of saw him,” Poletin told Newsday’s Andrew Gross after the game. “I let the puck go through, but you really (can’t) do much there. I just tried to get as strong as possible. I expected it, so it wasn’t that bad. He’s a big guy for sure. There’s not a lot you can do. I’m all good.”

“I think the whole building felt it,” Casey quipped. “Some people, probably in Jersey City and Hoboken, might (have) felt it.”

Not only was Silaev’s hit noteworthy, but so too was Casey playing in the game after missing much of last season with injuries and having not played in several months. 

“I was excited to see him back playing again,” Ryan Parent said about Casey. “I thought his skating looked really good. You know, being off the ice for that long sometimes, or I guess, away from playing, that’s one thing that you’re worrying about. But I thought his skating was good; his tempo was good. Great to see him get involved. Like we talked about with Anton, just having that team-first mentality. That was really good to see out of him.”

Prokhorov opened the scoring, 5:56 into the second period, off a feed from Luca Romano, the first of two goals he would score in the game. This one gave the Isles a 1-0 lead. 

Several minutes later, the Isles switched out Kotai to give Burke Hood a chance in goal. The goalie change seemed innocent at first, but the momentum shifted to the Devils as Mikael Diotte and Luke Wilfley scored 41 seconds apart (at 15:02 and 15:43) to give New Jersey a 2-1 lead. 

“Melo (Matyas Melovsky) just find me in the slot. I was by myself,” Diotte said. “So I just closed my eyes and shoot. I think and it went in. So that was a good play by him.”

Prokhorov scored his second goal of the game, 1:55 into the third period, off a net-front rebound to knot the score at two. Then, just eight minutes into the third period, Victor Eklund scored a power-play goal to give the Isles a 3-2 lead. 

With just over 10 minutes gone in the period, Matyas Melovsky tied the game on a stuff-in try, 3-3. Melovsky then doubled his fortunes with a second goal, 1:29 after his first, to give the Devils a 4-3 lead. 

The Isles pulled Hood with under two minutes to play and Cole Eiserman made the move pay off by scoring the game-tying goal with 1:21 left in the third period. Then, it was on to overtime, where, with 59.6 seconds left, Eiserman struck again, sending the Devils prospects to a 5-4 loss. 

“It was great to be back,” Melovsky said. “The legs were a little heavy, I think, for all of us, but I think we’ll be only better from here and yeah, I think it was solid game. We should have won in regular time, but then, in overtime, it’s kind of 50-50 and they scored a nice goal. So we unfortunately got the loss.”