In the middle of last March, when the Islanders faced the Senators, Kyle MacLean went looking for Bob Jones.
It had been a while since MacLean had talked with his old coach from juniors — they’d texted on occasion, but that was about it — and MacLean, who’d gone undrafted during his time with the OHL’s Oshawa Generals, was now with the Islanders and having some success.
This would’ve been a nice moment to share in it and reminisce with Jones, an assistant coach with the Senators.
But MacLean couldn’t talk with Jones, who died in August of ALS at age 54.
Though he’d remained on Ottawa’s staff after being diagnosed with the disease in December 2022, Jones scaled back his role during the past few months of last season. MacLean didn’t get the chance to see him that night.
“I wish I did keep in touch with him more,” MacLean told The Post before the Islanders’ 4-3 overtime loss to the Devils at UBS Arena. “Text here, phone call here and there. Jonesy, he was a good coach.”
Thursday night’s match in Ottawa was MacLean’s first time there as an NHLer, and naturally, the man who coached him as a young junior player popped into his head.
“Taught me a lot about developing my game,” MacLean said. “Helped me to figure out how to play defensively, PK, things like that.
“When you’re young it’s good to have [someone] — I felt like he was always in my corner, too. And he was always looking out for me to help my career.”
Though Jones had some health issues unrelated to ALS that kept him away from the team for parts of MacLean’s third season, the two overlapped from 2015-18 in Oshawa — a span over which MacLean went from a 16-year-old fighting for playing time to one of the team’s assistant captains.
“He’d come in the theater room, video room, maybe after a loss or something and start with a joke to lighten the mood a little bit,” MacLean said. “He’s a tough coach as well. Definitely scary at times, but it was nice seeing that side of him as well to lighten the mood and keep the guys together.”
MacLean never did get the chance to revel in his out-of-nowhere entrance into the Islanders’ lineup, his newly signed NHL contract or his strong playoff performance last season with Jones. He knows, though, there is a line to be drawn from those first few years in junior to now, and that Jones helped to trace it.
Alexander Romanov skated on his own Saturday morning and will accompany the team on the five-game road trip that begins Tuesday night in Edmonton, a positive sign as he deals with an upper-body injury. Romanov is considered day-to-day.
The Islanders changed Mike Reilly’s timetable from day-to-day to indefinite. Asked whether Reilly was doing OK in his recovery from Jordan Greenway’s hit that knocked him out last Friday, coach Patrick Roy said he could not answer.
