Mar 13 2008
LOST ISLAND
It was just a year ago when the New York Islanders were one of the feel good stories of the league. Garth Snow had stepped in as general manager and despite the cat calls and mocking Snow did an admirable job. Ted Nolan was brought in as head coach and showed his worth turning around a floundering franchise and leading them into the playoffs. “Flash forward” to a year later and this team resembles a fish out of water flapping around for air. In the course of one year owner Charles Wang was heard shouting “We gotta go back Garth WE GOTTA GO BACK,” from the roof tops of the Nassau Memorial Coliseum.
Now one year later we have a GM who is back to being the laughing stock of the league; a coach who is coming under fire for his refusal to adapt and play prospects and a franchise goalie who is burned out, possibly hurt and at odds with his head coach. “We gotta go back Garth!!” The seeds of turmoil were planted over the off season when the lineup went through massive changes. Leaving for big money were Tom Poti, Victor Kozlov, Jason Blake, Richard Zednik and trade deadline “rental” Ryan Smyth. The Isles also parted ways with their salary cap anchor Alexi Yashin as they bought out his contract shipping him back home to Mother Russia. The Islanders were in desperate need of forwards and they made bold offers to Scott Gomez and Chris Drury who chose New York City over Long Island. They ended up settling on Mike Comrie, Bill Guerin, Josef Vasicek and Ruslan Fedotenko. We can get on Garth Snow all we want but I will commend him for not getting into another bad contract. Only Kozlov has had a better than average year and as much as Ryan Smyth gives you all of those intangibles he has never had more than 70 points in a season. So now here we are in 2008 and the Isles are dead last in scoring and might be the most boring team that I have ever laid eyes on. I have told Dish that even the Devils are more interesting at this point. The trade deadline came and past and Snow did not make any major moves claming that the deals simply weren’t there. And this is where the other shoe dropped. There appears to be a clear rift between Ted Nolan and the GM as he feels that he is too friendly with the players and Snow did nothing to get Nolan the players he needed at the deadline. Nolan has also come under fire for his refusal to tinker his lines and play the young prospects in favor of veterans who are limited in talent but have earned his trust. This has drawn the ire of some of the fans. There are no Alexander Ovechkin’s or Sidney Crosby’s in the organization but this is the time for the youth to play so they can be properly evaluated. Their lack of an average defense and wingers who get over run by any team that can skate a lick has resulted in goalie Rick Dipietro to stand on his head every night. A common night for Dipietro usually has him facing 35 plus shots a game. For the first half of the season they got by however at the All Star game it appeared that Rick re-injured his hip. Since the all star game he has clearly not been the same goalie. About a week ago Dipietro suffered a loss in his family as his grandmother passed away and the Islander’s goalie left the team to be with his family. This is when things got weird. GM Garth Snow told him to take an extra day, which turned into three and when he did arrive back he found himself on the pine. After giving up 8 goals in his return Tuesday in Tampa, head coach Ted Nolan blasted his goalie after the loss. So now we have the franchise goalie, the head coach and the general manager lost in some weird turmoil triangle. What a difference a year makes. With the season truly “lost” the Isles have a lot of work to do over the off season as more than half their forwards are unrestricted free agents. I would expect a house cleaning to be coming soon! It will be truly interesting to see how this all plays out but until then just listen to the desperate cries of a desperate owner; “WE GOTTA GO BACK GARTH, WE GOTTA GO BACK!!!”
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