Mike and Dan look back at a packed week of trades, wins, a season sweep and one terrible loss that makes an already daunting upcoming week for the Islanders even more scary.

For five days last week, Islanders fans were feeling good. Three wins, two over the Rangers in a humiliating season sweep complete with chirps from a goofball kid who's already a star, and trades for Carson Soucy and Ondrej Palat that, while open to criticism, have yielded good early results. Then Saturday happened, when the Islanders played a sloppy, maddening game against the Nashville Predators at home and took a giant step back after three steps forward. It was the last thing we wanted to see with a huge slate coming up and an Olympic break looming that will put us all in stasis for three weeks.

We look back at all of last week's games and ahead to games against the Capitals, Penguins and Devils to close out the pre-Olympic schedule. One against a team directly behind you, one against a team directly in front of you and one that should be easy on paper but might end up being necessary. It's a massive week that will tell us a lot about how the trade deadline might shape up. Of course, we said that before this week, too...

Finally we look at an article that ranked NHL arena experiences and at UBS Arena's fair placement. It's a great venue with one huge issue keeping it from the league's upper echelon.

Be sure to count the times Dan says he wants to talk about something and then just never does. This might be an all time record.

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