from Steve Zipay of Newsday,

The Islanders are here again in Florida after a quick turnaround from the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs against a rested Lightning club, but head coach Jack Capuano isn’t whining about the schedule.

“Turnaround can be a mental thing, no question,” he said after Wednesday’s morning skate. “You find out late that we’re going to get on a plane the next day, but we’ve been resilient and there’s no excuses: That’s been the message to our guys, we can’t control what we can’t control. We deserve to be here, our team has battled through so much this year. We had some puck luck and our goaltender played well. The fact that we’re moving on, we should be excited if the games are spread out or back to back. The fact that we’re playing against Tampa should give us enough excitement to continue.”

In his pre-game briefing at Amalie Arena, Capuano touched on a number of topics:

— On playoff experience perhaps being a factor, with Tampa’s deep runs versus this edition of the Islanders’ maiden voyage into the second round: “We got some guys that have played a lot of hockey. At this point of the year, with the way the NHL is, the parity, there’s a lot of teams that are evenly matched.

continued