Editor's Note: Bill Strong checks in with another retro-live blog to cheer you on a summer day. This time, the focus is the slaughter of the Red Wings (the Wings haven't scored on the Isles in two years, don'tcha know). For reference, here's the Lighthouse Hockey recap of the day. Read on for Bill's live trip, from sweaters to a beloved former Islander sighting.

We are back with another hot-off-my-fingers edition of the RETRO LIVE BLOG.

Thanks for the response to last week's RLB of the Shawn Bates penalty shot game.  This time, we decided to do something of the More Recent Variety and go all the way back to January of this year when the Islanders beat the Detroit Red Wings 6-0.

The reason for this choice was simple: this is my feel-good present to you and Chelsea Clinton on her wedding weekend.  This off-season has been an exercise in head-scratching, eye bleeding, and bewilderment so I thought we all should just sit back and enjoy the most thorough Islanders ass-whipping of recent memory.

So here we are.  It's January 12, 2010.  I recorded this off the Center Ice package.

We open with Deb Placey and the brightest yellow sweater known to man telling us that Brendan Witt has been placed on the IR with a lower-body injury.  This was the beginning of the Bridgeport Banishment, I believe.

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Editor's Note: And now for something completely different... We asked Bill to resurrect the "retro live blogs" that he use used to do. A fun diversion for slow (ha!) summer days. The first one is from a game most will remember.

Hey everyone.  I am Bill Strong, Islander fan for 32 (yikes) years and former owner/writer for nyiforlife.com.  Dominik invited me to share one of my gimmicks from the old site, the RETRO LIVE BLOG, where we go back in time and write about events, games, and other stuff in REAL TIME like they are actually happening again.

For my first RLB, we decided to go back to 4/24/2002.  Things were great in Islander Country then.  The team was on a long-awaited rebound with Michael Peca and Alexei Yashin leading the return to the playoffs.  Game four of the series should have been, by all rights, the beginning of something great.  It should have been the step off point for an Islander resurgence.  But 'shoulda beens' are a dime a dozen--ask Brett Lindros--and as we know, everything crapped out later in the series when Darcy Tucker cheap-shotted future friend/Leafs teammate Peca and the Isles were sent home in game seven.

About the RLB: I am watching the DVD that came in the New York Islanders 10 Greatest Games DVD set.  It's the original broadcast from ESPN2.  That means we have to deal with Neil Smith on color commentary.  He spends most of the game trying to get himself over.

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