"Rick DiPietro needs another surgery, and yet another of his Islanders seasons appears prematurely over.

Newsday has learned that DiPietro will have surgery on Tuesday to repair a sports hernia. He has been out since he suffered a groin injury Dec. 3 in Dallas, an injury that nagged him long enough that the more serious sports hernia was discovered by the team's medical staff.

"This is something I thought would just heal up and go away, and instead it got more and more debilitating," a somber DiPietro told Newsday Friday from Boston, where he will have the surgery. "I'm almost bionic at this point.""