Opening night

 After a long summer without hockey, tonight's the night for all you diehards to get your first look at the 2010-11 Islanders.

As revealed yesterday, the Islanders will start Rick DiPietro in goal-- his first opening night start since October 5, 2007 against the Sabres in Buffalo.

For their home opener at Nassau Coliseum, the Islanders will host the Dallas Stars, who began their season with a 4-3 overtime win over New Jersey last night.

Dallas rallied back from an early two-goal deficit and netminder Kari Lehtonen turned away 27 shots to give the Stars their first win of the season. The Stars were 9-10-5 in back-to-back games last season.

Will be back with more during/after the season's first official morning skate, but until then here's a telling quote from Scott Gordon about the team's approach to a new season:

"Our biggest challenge is to get past those injuries to Kyle [Okposo] and Mark [Streit] and move forward, We can't use those as an excuse. That can't be our mindset.

*Jets Head coach Rex Ryan will drop the puck at 7:13.

I'd have guessed Milan Jurcina, Bruno Gervais and Michael Grabner to be the scratches for tonight's game, but with the way the D-Pairs are skating it may be Hillen, Gervais and Grabner.

Line Combos from morning skate:

Comeau-Tavares-Parenteau

Moulson-Nielsen-Hunter

Bailey-Weight-Niederreiter

Gillies-Konopka-Sim

Mottau-Wisniewski

Eaton-Martinek

MacDonald-Jurcina

Hillen-Gervais

Roloson

Lawson

***DiPietro will still start in goal even though he is not participating in the morning skate