Good Morning, Islanders Country.
Beware the Isles of March. You might already feel a bit like Caesar, betrayed by this season even before the calendar flipped to this treacherous month. After finishing February with a 5-5-2 record, the Islanders will play a club-record 17 times in March following rescheduled games due to league postponements.
Besides all the hockey, trade winds will be swirling. There will be players going, assets coming, and likely a tough goodbye or two for players that have been part of a memorable chapter of Islanders’ hockey. It’ll be a month where we learn some things about a few players and perhaps gain insight into front office plans for next season.
Coming up, a deep look into Devon Toews’ ascent with the Avalanche and the NHL’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Plus, Butch’s jersey gets sent to the toy department and the Islanders logo (no, not the Fisherman one) was ranked last!?!
Let’s dive in.
📰 NEWS: The Islanders knew they were trading a good player when Devon Toews was dealt as a restricted free agent (RFA) to the Colorado Avalanche for a pair of second-round picks but did they know how good?
Toews has turned into an underrated star, performing at an All-Star level in Colorado playing alongside one of the league’s most electric defensemen, Cale Makar. The immediate pain of the cap-driven trade was dulled by the team coming within a game of the Stanley Cup Final last spring. But now, in the midst of a lost season with a glaring need for a puck-moving defenseman, it’s started to sting.
The Isles had developed the exact type of player their back-end lacks. He was home-grown and coming into his own, but found his next level somewhere else. In a Twitter thread by Isles fan Andy Francess, he uses video from Toews’ time on Long Island to argue that the signs he would arise to a top-pair defenseman were there.
In the Denver Post, Mike Chambers wrote of Toews “If a goaltender is a team’s most important player, the fourth-year veteran is probably in a five-way tie for second among the Avs with Makar, fellow superstar Nathan MacKinnon, winger Mikko Rantanen and team captain Gabe Landeskog.”
That type of lofty praise is commonplace for those that watch the former Islanders’ fourth-round pick on a regular basis now and unsurprising to those that knew that Toews was capable of reaching that level.
BLOSSOMING
“I thought he was really good with the Islanders, but with (Islanders coach Barry) Trotz, one of the better coaches in the NHL in my opinion, Trotz kind of already had his veterans and Toews was kind of his third-pairing guy,” Toews’ Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said.
“The trade to Colorado allowed him to blossom. I give Jared Bednar all the credit in the world because he gave Devon a chance — an opportunity to be more than a third-pairing guy. Obviously, he’s getting rewarded for it now.”
ADVANCED STATISTICS DARLING
The advanced stats crowd are big Devon Toews fans - and it’s not a recent phenomenon. Read this story from analytic JFreshHockey after the Avalanche acquired the two-way defenseman waxing poetic about his abilities.
Devon Toews is a top four two-way defenceman who has put up pretty absurd macro-level results in his first two seasons in the NHL. His isolated impact on scoring chances for and against, measured by EvolvingWild’s RAPM model, ranks 5th in the NHL in the past two years combined, which has caused a whole lot of excitement among those in the analytics community
Advance stats reward players that excel at puck possession and create more chances and goals when on the ice. In The Athletic, players’ cards created by Dom Luszczyszyn and Shayna Goldman, show that Toews has played a star level each of the last two seasons in all categories but one.
Following up from his 2020 prediction, in late January @JFreshhockey had this to say, “Devon Toews is indeed the elite #1 the stats said he was when the Avalanche traded for him. Model is giving the offensive credit to Makar so far this season but wouldn't be surprised to see that work itself out in the 2nd half. ” Never mind the photo, it was a children’s drawing that was used during player introductions one night.
WHAT COULD’VE BEEN
Ugh. Imagine a top four of Pelech, Pulock, Dobson, and Toews. Did it have to be this way? Hard to say.
Part of the thinking for Lamoriello and the front office when dealing Toews was that in 2021 and beyond, his ice-time and production could be picked up by an even younger and cheaper defenseman already on the roster.
"We would not have made this move certainly if the ice time that Devon received, we didn't have the ability to put a player into that, and Noah Dobson will certainly, we feel is ready to take the next step. We'll have to just wait and see,” said Lamoriello after the trade.
After being an inconsistent performer last year, Dobson has matured - especially offensively - shooting often and scoring nine goals since Dec. 5, one more than Toews’ teammate Makar. He has been among the brightest spots this season and appears on his way to proving Isles’ brass right about filling the void left by Toews.
But still, the question remains whether or not the Isles had to trade Toews. Yes, the move allowed them payroll flexibility to sign fellow RFAs Mathew Barzal and Ryan Pulock and acquire assets that eventually helped shed burdensome contracts (Andrew Ladd’s contract in July), but were there alternatives?
Did the Islanders share the view of others that Toews was a future top-pair defenseman? If they did, did they do enough to avoid trading him? If not, it's an evaluation miss. A year and a half later, it feels they received too little for a player they didn’t want to move and should have worked harder to keep.
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders take on the Colorado Avalanche tonight after earning a road victory against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday. This is the first meeting between the teams since February of 2020. New York is 1-4-1 in their last six games in Denver.
📊 STANDINGS:
🇺🇦 TAKING A STAND: In a press release Monday, the NHL outlined measures it has put in place, reprimanding Russia for its actions.
"The National Hockey League condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine and urges a peaceful resolution as quickly as possible," the statement read. "Effective immediately, we are suspending our relationships with our business partners in Russia and we are pausing our Russian language social and digital media sites. In addition, we are discontinuing any consideration of Russia as a location for any future competitions involving the NHL.
"We also remain concerned about the well-being of the players from Russia, who play in the NHL on behalf of their NHL clubs, and not on behalf of Russia. We understand they and their families are being placed in an extremely difficult position."
Understandably, the Islanders have not had Russian goalies Ilya Sorokin or Semyon Varlamov speak to the media since the tragic events started. It’s a difficult position for Russian athletes who are concerned about how their public statements could impact their friends and family still living in Russia during these tumultuous times.
📚 SOUND SMART: On Sunday, the Islanders scored the first goal for the third time in the last four games - and won. How the game starts has been a predictor of how the game will end for the Isles who are 15-4-5 when scoring first and are 5-17-3 when allowing the opening goal.
From Kevin Kurz in The Athletic:
Surrendering the first goal of the game has been a particular problem, perhaps the biggest when it comes to the Islanders’ failure to establish any game-to-game momentum. The Islanders have won just five of the 25 games in which they’ve fallen behind 1-0. That .200 winning percentage in such situations is 25th in the NHL, and none of the seven teams behind them in that category is in playoff position, either. They recently had a stretch of allowing the first goal in 11 of 12 games
🗓 ISLE REMEMBER: There’s no February 29th this year, but we won’t let that prevent us from recalling February 29, 2020, when the Islanders raised No. 91 of the lovable Butch Goring to the rafters (or toy department) at the Nassau Coliseum.
"You want people to know who you are and it's going to be great for me, my family and friends," Goring said. "When they go to the Coliseum or Belmont and every game, you'll be there and there will be times over the years where they won't even know who I am, but my name and number will still be there and that's a pretty incredible thing."
🔗 Whether the Islanders succeed or fail might come down to this one simple facet of the game by Kevin Kurz, The Athletic “ The weekend in Southern California should serve as a reminder of what the Islanders will have to do, and what they’ll have to avoid, just to have a chance.”
🔗 Islanders go for rare win streak but face formidable Avalanche by Andrew Gross, Newsday “It hasn’t been the other teams that have been the Islanders’ biggest opponent this season. Rather it’s been their maddening inability to sustain any consistency. So while the NHL-best Avalanche are a formidable foe, the Islanders’ biggest test on Tuesday night at Ball Arena will be to see whether they can end their five-game road trip with back-to-back wins.”
And we leave you with this…Eyes on Isles Matt O’Leary discovered that OwnersBox Fantasy Sports ranked the Islanders dead last in the NHL for logos. Now, the Islanders’ aren’t the only head-scratching ranking, but never has the classic “NY” been ranked this low in a logo ranking.
As O'Leary points out, in 2017, Fox Sports ranked the Islanders logo 14th which is much more realistic. Bardown had it at 22 which I think is a touch low but not awful, and The Hockey Writers had it 16.
Thanks for reading! Follow us on Twitter for regular updates until the next newsletter.
And please check out our newsletters about the Knicks and Mets, too.
Is OwnersBox Fantasy Sports run by a 12 year-old?