Brayden Schenn has fulfilled leadership role and more for Islanders

Pete DeBoer saw it first with Joe Thornton when he was in San Jose, then with Joe Pavelski while in Dallas.Now, it is 35-year-old Brayden Schenn on Long Island playing the role, “on the back nine” of his career, of a leading voice and mentor in the dressing room, while maintaining a high level of play in his own right. “He recognizes he was brought in here as much for his intangibles as what he brings on the ice,” DeBoer said Thursday before the Islanders faced Carolina.

“I think he understands that.I think he’s taken that piece of it and really embraced it.” Indeed, as much as Schenn struggled last season upon arriving as the Islanders’ big-ticket acquisition at the trade deadline, one wonders if general manager Mathieu Darche is itching to find the nearest microphone and declare, “I told you so.” Schenn not only has stepped seamlessly into a leadership role in the Islanders dressing room, he is centering a trio with Emil Heineman and Victor Eklund that’s been the club’s most consistent line of late. The difference between walking in midseason when cracks were already starting to form in the Islanders foundation and getting to participate in building the foundation from training camp onwards has been massive.

Schenn has four goals and five assists through 14 games, has fit like a glove in DeBoer’s system and when asked about all of this Thursday morning, sheepishly replied, “I hate talking about myself.” That is, of course, exactly how the Islanders want their older, example-setting veterans to respond to such a question.Schenn did acquiesce to explaining the added comfort he has with the Islanders now, as opposed to when he arrived in March. “I would say it’s just everything.

It’s not one thing,” he said.“You can’t pinpoint one thing and say that’s why.

I think it’s, one, coming here, gotta prove yourself every single day in this league.You get a great opportunity to play with great linemates.

The organizati...