The Latest on the Brock Nelson Situation & Nelson Speaks on Rumors

NEW YORK — It’s Monday morning during the trade deadline week. Thanks to Brock Nelson, the New York Islanders are being talked about nationally. He’s the number one available player on multiple trade boards around the league. With the deadline on Friday, chatter is rapidly gaining steam.

With the chatter comes a new set of Nelson intel. He also spoke at length about his situation to the media this morning ahead of his 900th NHL game.

Brock Nelson Updates:

The first and only place to begin is updating the Nelson situation. Elliotte Friedman provided the latest in his podcast, the 32 Thoughts Podcast Trade Deadline Preview.

In it, he made some juicy comments about Nelson’s availability, along with Kyle Palmieri:

“Teams believe that their players are going to be available. They do think they’re going to get a shot at Nelson, at least. Palmieri’s out there too, but Nelson has the buzz with a bunch of people waiting.”

That’s a minor departure from saying, “Teams aren’t sure, but they’re waiting to know on Nelson.” Now, it’s Friedman outright saying people think the Islanders will sell. It’s a jarring dialogue switch and one that makes anyone think a big trade could be coming.

Then, Friedman immediately threw cold water on that:

“Do not underestimate Nelson’s loyalty to the Islanders. How much they mean to him, and how much he likes being there with his teammates.”

That sparks up the extension talk again. It’s clear Nelson is highly coveted, and Friedman ended the Nelson portion by saying teams are holding their assets back from deals to take a major run at Nelson. It should be a fun week.

Nelson Speaks About the Deadline:

Asked directly what he wants, Nelson deflected and said: “It all depends. Everyone wants just an easy answer and it doesn’t always work out that way. It’s hard to, like I said I love playing here, I love playing here. I’m still playing here until someone tells me differently.”

Nelson, often stoic and calm, clearly feels the stress. It’d be hard not to. The big talk is his potential extension, which he hasn’t agreed to yet, comes down to whether or not he thinks this team can win. So, I asked him that directly. Here’s what he said:

“I think everyone in here knows how important these games are, and we mean that, and we say that we believe we can win. If you didn’t, I think obviously we’d have bigger issues. I think the confidence in the group is in here, and I think we believe that we can go out there and win every game. Obviously, we know where we’re at and what we have to do. We have to go on a pretty good run here so yeah, I think if you’re lacking in that area, I think you probably wouldn’t be here.”

That’s akin to the cliché messaging we’ve become accustomed to hearing from the Islanders and their players. Obviously, I wasn’t expecting Nelson to say outright he doesn’t believe in the group. But it’s interesting that it immediately went to the group believing instead of him directly believing.

Nelson probably just wants this week to be over so he can move on to whatever next week brings. There are just four days left until the deadline, but the talk won’t slow down here.