Long Island native shares top hockey memories as run on NBC’s competition TV show continues
ByChristopher Detwiler
November 08, 2026
It was pretty easy for “The Traitors” star Joe Vanella to choose a New York Islanders player to recruit for the show.
“I would take (Matthew Schaefer) into that castle with me, and we would run it,” Vanella told NHL.com. “And if he’s even half as good at playing ‘The Traitors’ as he is at playing hockey, then we’re going to be in fine shape.”
Vanella, a diehard Islanders fan from Long Island, New York, has been front and center of this season of NBC’s hit competition show, “The Traitors: New Blood,” where 22 competitors were brought to a castle in Scotland and cast as either a traitor or a faithful.
The game is simple: Traitors must hide their identity from their fellow castle-mates while “murdering” one of the faithfuls each night, and faithfuls are tasked with finding and eliminating the traitors.
Whoever is left standing at the end of the game wins.
Naturally, Vanella was the first player to be selected as a traitor.
Throughout the game, he has used his friendly personality to make nice in the castle and obscure his identity as a traitor. That strategy – along with his ruthless gameplay behind the scenes – has carried him through. As of publishing, Vanella is still alive in the game.
He seemed to think Schaefer could use that same strategy to dominate in the castle.
“I try and make myself as likeable as I can be so people don’t even want me to be a traitor,” Vanella said. “And who is the most likeable player in the NHL right now? My boy, the best defenseman in the NHL, Matthew Schaefer.”
Vanella met Schaefer during a fan fest event at UBS Arena last season with his 5-year-old daughter. She brought Schaefer three drawings, one of which the young star signed and gave back to her.
“He made my daughter feel like a million bucks,” Vanella said. “To this day, she still talks about this. Whenever anybody asks her about hockey, it’s only Matthew Schaefer. It’s the only person she talks about.”
Vanella has been an Islanders season ticket holder since 2009 but first started following the Islanders in the 1990s. Vanella, 44, is too young to remember the Islanders dynasty but has stuck with the team through thick and thin.
“The great thing about the Islanders is that they’re Long Island’s one true team,” Vanella said. “There are other New York sports teams, but the Islanders are specific to Long Island, and they’ve always been our guys. And I think that’s what drew me to them.”
He credited Bryan Berard, Bryan McCabe and Eric Fichaud for growing his passion in the mid-90s.
“Were they great teams? No. But they’re what really kicked off my fandom,” he said.
The Islanders eventually became something Vanella couldn’t live without.
As best man at his brother-in-law’s wedding, Vanella got him a game-used Travis Green hockey stick. Vanella’s fourth date with his wife was at an Islanders game, and they also spent their first Valentine’s Day as a couple at the arena.
“She put on a good face,” he joked. “The Islanders have always been something that have mattered so much in my personal life.”
One of his favorite memories as an Islanders fan was attending the legendary “Fight Night” game against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Nassau Coliseum in 2011, a game that saw 346 penalty minutes served – the sixth most in any NHL game in history.
“‘Fight Night’ was huge,” Vanella said. “It was like that last death rattle of old-time hockey where you got full line brawls.”
Vanella can even be seen in the background of a photo of former Islanders forward Micheal Haley after one of those fights.
The 2013 Eastern Conference First Round series against the Penguins also stands out to Vanella, despite the six-game series loss for the Islanders. Particularly Game 4, a win for the Islanders, was a highlight.
“The Coliseum shook, man,” Vanella said. “It was such an amazing experience. People outside high-fiving. I ended up on top of an ambulance somehow. … It was like the world ended after we won. It was amazing.”
Vanella described the gameplay in both “The Traitors” and hockey as “elegant violence,” and compared himself to a goaltender as a traitor on the show.
“I’m trying to keep (the faithfuls) off the scoreboard so my team wins,” he said. “You have to have a certain level of finesse, but you also have to be blunt when it calls for it.”
Now that filming has wrapped and Vanella is back on Long Island, he’s been attending Islanders games at every chance that he gets, greeting fans along the concourse at UBS Arena.
“The way Long Island takes to the Islanders, I feel like Long Island has really taken to me,” he said. “What I get all the time, and what absolutely warms my heart is, ‘You really represent Long Island so well.’ And those are things that I’ve said to Matt Martin when I’ve met him. Those are things that I’ve said to Cal Clutterbuck. Those are things that I’ve said to Casey Cizikas.
“So, to have somebody come up and say that to me, when I’ve said that to people for so long, is just bananas.”
Vanella’s journey on “The Traitors” continues Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
