Chaffee Gets the Call as Islanders Scrape the Bottom of the Forward Depth Chart

Mitchell Chaffee is back on Long Island. The Islanders recalled the veteran forward from Hamilton after Matias Maccelli and Calum Ritchie both exited the October 18th game against Toronto with lower-body injuries, leaving the club with just 12 healthy forwards. Chaffee had put up six points in six AHL games before the promotion, which is the kind of number that gets you a phone call fast when the roster above you is crumbling.

The recall papers over the immediate problem, but it doesn't fix the underlying one. Maccelli, despite slotting third on the left wing depth chart, had been one of the more productive forwards in the lineup. Losing him — even briefly — matters. Ritchie's absence compounds it. The Islanders were already thin up front before this week; now they're working with margins that leave almost no room for anything else to go wrong.

Worth noting on the right side: the drop-off behind Simon Holmstrom is steep. Daniil Prokhorov and Matt Luff are the names behind him on the depth chart, and neither has registered meaningful production this season. That was a concern before the injuries. It's a sharper one now, with the roster already stretched.

GM Mathieu Darche has been talking up rookie Victor Eklund this week — "relentless" was the word he used — and a roster decision on Eklund appears to be coming. My read is that the forward crunch accelerates that timeline whether the organization wanted it to or not.