So Darryl Bootland walked down the hallway in a suit today at about 5, shaking hands with his new teammates, hanging out in the middle of the other room down the hall, traded for Matt Keith in a pass-in-the-night deal. He’s in tonight for the Pirates, while Keith will wear his old 27 for Bridgeport.
“They just decided they wanted to make a move, and I was the lucky guy,” Bootland said after a little chalk talk with the coaching staff.
“It’s interesting. It’s definitely a shock. Got a little wake-up call. There’s 12 messages on my phone, I figured there has to be something going on. It’s a little shocking, a little exciting.”
He came here as a free agent and was touted as a guy who’d scrap and score some goals. He scrapped a bit. The goals didn’t come. The Islanders moved on after 28 games here.
“(I’ll miss) Mostly the guys, I think, a great group of guys,” Bootland said. “I got along with most everyone, that was the nice thing. It was a lot of fun, helping out with the young kids.”
He got that mischievous grin we’d come to expect for three months. “I’ll miss John Sullo most of all.”