The New York Islanders announced today that forward Marc Gatcomb has been recalled from the team’s AHL affiliate, the Bridgeport Islanders. This recall comes in the aftermath of an injury suffered by veteran winger Kyle Palmieri. Palmieri is expected to miss six to eight months with a torn ACL.
The team also announced that Palmieri has been placed on injured reserve, retroactive to his injury date of Nov. 11. The IR placement created the necessary room on the team’s NHL roster to allow for the addition of Gatcomb.
This recall of Gatcomb allows the Islanders to further reinforce their forward group, a group that has been left depleted due to Palmieri’s injury, as well as an injury to center Jean-Gabriel Pageau. Pageau is out week-to-week with an upper-body injury.
Gatcomb is, of course, not a one-to-one replacement for either injured veteran. Palmieri had scored 18 points in 25 games before his injury, while Pageau had 12 points in 22 games and led all Islanders players in short-handed time on ice per game. Gatcomb, 26, has just nine points in 40 career NHL games, and has not been an overwhelming scorer at the AHL level either. It’s extremely unlikely the Islanders will be able to replace the production they’ve lost with this recall, but it’s also extremely unlikely that the Islanders made this recall in order to get Gatcomb’s offensive production.
Instead, it’s far more likely the Islanders are looking for a call-up player with competitiveness, a strong work rate, positional versatility, and the ability to occupy a specific depth role while they elevate other players to fill the larger roles left open due to these injuries. Rookie Maxim Shabanov is likely to be elevated to the top-six to fill Palmieri’s role, and after scoring 67 points in 65 KHL games last season, he’s a more obvious fit for a scoring line than Gatcomb.
Gatcomb is likely to slot into the Islanders’ bottom-six, and at 26 years old, it’s likely that if he is to become a full-time NHLer, that’s the kind of role he’d occupy. This recall is a significant opportunity for the former UConn Husky, who went undrafted and originally signed with the Canucks organization coming out of college. He’s a pending RFA (with arbitration rights) playing out a one-year, one-way $900K contract.
Gatcomb’s 40 NHL games without a doubt helped Gatcomb earn a one-way contract for 2025-26, and this recall now gives him a pretty extensive runway to get into some NHL games and carve out a more regular spot on the Islanders’ NHL roster. While there’s no direct financial difference in his salary between the NHL and AHL, the more NHL games he gets into, and plays well in, the better his contract options are likely to be this summer. And while it’s unlikely his upcoming restricted free agency reaches that point, getting into NHL games would also aid his case in a future arbitration battle.