OW AVAILABLE! New York Islanders: A to Z will introduce a new generation of fans to the legendary players, magical moments, and colorful 50-year history of the Islanders.
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Good Morning, Islanders Country.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend and their unofficial start of summer is off to a great start.
Stability brings success, and success brings stability. That’s how it’s supposed to work, and that’s how it works - at least some of the time.
With Garth Snow as GM, the Islanders’ leadership was stable for over a decade, but few would call his tenure successful. Jack Capuano coached the team for seven seasons and led them to their first postseason series win in 23 years. He was gone less than two years later, fired by Snow, and hasn’t received a second head coaching opportunity since. Garth and Cappy had, at best, modest success.
You need more than stability to be successful. Organizations need the right type of stability and choose to maintain it for the right reasons.
Is that what the Isles are doing? If you’re the Islanders and owners Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin, do you want the franchise going on its third coach in three seasons? Some would see decisive action, but others will see the team undoing a lot of the credibility they’ve had built up in recent years as a serious franchise with conviction behind what they are doing.
Now, I think even his most ardent detractors would agree with that Lou Lamoriello has brought stability and credibility to the Islanders, along with a fair amount of success. However, there’s a still vocal segment of the fanbase that wanted to clean house and go in a different direction, with a new GM and new coach for 2023-24.
We get the reasons why and understand why many feel the timing was right to bring in someone with a new perspective. The culture around the organization has changed, and any new hire would be a benefactor of that.
As we await the start of the Stanley Cup Final, there was a flurry of front-office activity around the league. That change and turnover can look and feel exciting and promising from afar. It can even turn a pessimistic fanbase into one with optimism and hope (at least for a while), regardless of the team’s shortcomings and realistic expectations.
Stability can be boring, and that’s acceptable as long as stability doesn't lead to predictable results. That’s where things get tricky. The Islanders are betting that their version of stability is still the most direct path to success, one that will bring them different results than the last two seasons. If they’re proven wrong, no amount of stability should be worth staying the course.
Coming up, the coaching carousel takes a lap, and the new and old Toronto GM is introduced. Plus, players qualify as trade bait this season, a favorable UBS Arena review, Billy Smith’s expansion distinction, and an uptown boy’s tennis girlfriend rocks Isles gear.
Let’s dive in.
📰 NEWS: The coaching carousel continued with two hirings and a firing. Barry Trotz made his first moves as incoming Preds GM by firing John Hynes and hiring former Panthers interim coach and Devils’ assistant Andrew Brunette. Back in the Metro, the Washington Capitals named Toronto assistant Spencer Carbery head coach.
There was momentum for Peter Laviolette and New York Rangers earlier in the week, but now the momentum is trending towards the ex-Nashville head coach Hynes and Blueshirts GM Chris Drury played three seasons together at Boston University and won the National Championship in 1995
The Maple Leafs introduced Brad Treliving as their new General Manager, and around the same time, which we’re sure was purely coincidental, Kyle Dubas was announced as the President of Hockey Operations for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Dubas had memorably said that he wouldn’t be popping up anywhere else if he wasn’t coming back to Toronto, citing how difficult the year was for his family. Well, something changed, and his family got on board for a move to Pittsburgh, where he will take the role Brendan Shanahan had while Dubas was in Toronto.
Who stays, and who goes?
This week in The Athletic, beat reported Kevin Kurz took a look at the Islanders roster and put the players in a variety of buckets from “Lock to Stay” to “Likely Saying Goodbye” There wasn’t much to disagree with, but I was a little surprised that defenseman Noah Dobson was in the “Lock” category.
Kurz’s logic makes sense; you don’t sell low on a player and especially not one that has a set of skills you are lacking on the blueline. However, Dobson is one of the few players on the roster that has trade value and did regress defensively last season while failing to be a productive quarterback on the powerplay.
I would’ve had him in the “Trade Bait” section, where Kurz has JG Pageau and Oliver Wahlstrom listed. Then there’s Scott Mayfield, who Kurz has likely to leave. The 30-year-old righty defenseman is indeed likely to get a bigger offer somewhere else, but I still feel that there’s a deal to be made for him to remain on Long Island if the Islanders are inclined to keep him in the fold.
📆 STANLEY CUP FINAL SCHEDULE:
🏆 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS:
That’s More Like It
A week after we told you about a study that ranked UBS Arena the worst for fans due to the parking, proximity to restaurants, and price of beer, we give you a different take on the Islanders’ new home.
28-year-old Boston hockey fan Tyler Hopkins visited all 32 NHL arenas in just 63 days this season to find out which team has the best fan experience in the NHL. Hopkins chronicled all of his visits on his Instagram page. He graded each arena on overall fan experience, goal horn, and venue.
The Islanders' home rink was only of three arenas to earn 9's across the board, joining the Seattle Kraken’s Climate Pledge Arena and the United Center, home to the Chicago Blackhawks. His hometown Bruins were slightly below, getting an 8 for the venue, but 9's in the other two categories.
Lights, Camera, Isles
The Islanders logo has made its way onto the big screen quite a few times in recent years, and that cinematic trend continues with Jennifer Lawrence's new film "No Hard Feelings." The film is set in Montauk, and in the trailer, actor Scott MacArthur is seen wearing an Anders Lee jersey. You can fast-forward to the 0:57 mark of the trailer if you want to check it out.
Over the last decade, the Islanders logo has appeared in some major movies, including "The Wolf of Wall Street," “Spiderman: No Way Home,” and “Entourage” starting Isles die-hard fan Kevin Connolly.
📚 SOUND SMART: When the Islanders won the Stanley Cup in 1980, Billy Smith was the only player selected during the 1972 NHL Expansion Draft. When the 1973-74 Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup in their seventh NHL season, there were four players on that team that the team selected in the 1967 expansion, including future HOF goaltender Bernie Parent.
If the Vegas Golden Knights win the Cup, they will have done it with seven players on the roster that they took at their expansion draft. They are William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault, Reilly Smith, Shea Theodore, Brayden McNabb, William Carrier, and Zach Whitecloud.
🗓 ISLES REWIND: On May 31, 2021, Casey Cizikas scored at 14:48 of overtime, as the Islanders evened their second-round series vs. the Boston Bruins with a 4-3 win in Game 2 at TD Garden. Cizikas won it on a breakaway after a turnover by defenseman Jeremy Lauzon at the Bruins’ blue line.
"You're just trying to do the right things in overtime, be in the right spots,” said Cizikas. “I was lucky enough for that puck to pop off in the middle there and give me an opportunity to get that one.”
🔗 What the Islanders might salvage if the Maple Leafs’ upveaval becomes a full implosion by Ethan Sears, New York Post “Our parlor game here will be whether the Islanders, who have avoided making the sort of major changes that seem afoot in Toronto thus far, could make use of any assets — players, coaches, front office — that might be on the move from the Leafs and whether any potential moves might be realistic.”
🔗 5 Pending UFA Defensemen Islanders Could Target This Summer by Stefen Rosner, The Hockey News “With how the 2022-23 season played out, the New York Islanders should be looking to upgrade their backend this summer. Here are five pending unrestricted free-agent defensemen that could be a fit.”
And we leave you with this…Eugenie "Genie" Bouchard, a 29-year-old Canadian Tennis player, posted this photo of her wearing an Islanders jacket on her Instagram account and out to her 2.4M followers. Why would she be wearing the Isles gear?
Well, she’s dating Christie Brinkley’s son, Jack Brinkley-Cook.
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