Exclusive | Isaiah Georges head-turning Islanders start shouldnt surprise anyone

EDMONTON, Alberta — When Isaiah George was 17, a rookie in the Ontario Hockey League with the London Knights, injuries forced the coaching staff to move him up to the top defense pair. George had made a good impression.He worked hard and had a good personality.

The coaching staff liked him.But there was, naturally, some question about how he would handle the assignment, which came in a rivalry game at Kitchener. London ended up losing, but George opened some eyes in the process. “Just being in that barn, nothing really knocks him off,” Dylan Hunter, who coaches defensemen for the Knights, told The Post over the phone Tuesday.

“He’s so stable in that sense.So when you saw him do that at 17, go against a top line — they were a very good team — being able to hold his own, we knew we had something there. “Then we were like, all of a sudden, ‘OK, this guy, he could be something.

He could be a minutes-eater here.’ He doesn’t really get razzled or frazzled at all.” The parallels to the situation in which George finds himself three years later — getting called up to the Islanders, almost immediately getting thrown onto the top pair and thriving — are obvious.There was little choice other than to throw the 20-year-old George into the fire, but nobody expected him to be so unflappable so quickly.

His fourth NHL game was Tuesday night against the Oilers, and it is already becoming clear that if he keeps it up, the Islanders will need to make room for him in the lineup once they get healthy. “I write it down.I tell myself that I can play at this level and be successful,” George told The Post.

“So I always had that internal belief and put it in my mind.Definitely looking at the pathway, looking at the direction that most players take, I was definitely surprised to get that opportunity this early.” What speaks particularly on George is that, asked where he needed to improve most at the start of his junior career, Hunter cites break...