The summer is an extremely hectic time for me. It’s where I kind of shape-shift from a hockey writer, who writes features and this blog for NYSportsday.com, who is also a college student and Editor-in-Chief of a college newspaper, to a full-time journalist, who covers the Brooklyn Cyclones for the Brooklyn Papers, Bay Currents, Mets Inside Pitch, NYSportsday and NY Sport Scene magazine.

Usually, it’s a welcomed transformation, as I’d much rather be at the ballpark [that’s ten minutes away from my home] covering games than just spewing my opinion and writing stories where I do little or no reporting, but this year is different.

Damn I miss hockey.

With all of these rumors going around as well, with Blake reportedly looking to sign with Minnesota and the Isles allegedly offering Ryan Smyth everything but my girlfriend to stay on Long Island, it’s obvious that this offseason has been extremely entertaining thus far.

If that wasn’t enough, the rumors of Guerin and Gomez coming here are enough to make sure that HockeyBuzz.com and NHL.com always have opened tabs on my Firefox browser, even when I’m at Keyspan covering games.

As far as the Smyth situation goes, I’d give him anything he wanted, except my girlfriend [who’s more of a Rico kind of girl anyway] to stay on the Island. The guy played injured during most of his time on the Island and still put up solid numbers, but that isn’t the biggest reason why I’d keep him. First off, the guy is a natural leader and is as solid a two-way player in the NHL as anyone I’ve ever seen. Sure, he isn’t going to score 100-points and he’s not going to win a Selke anytime soon, but he’s good enough for me. Lastly, the game is a gamer that will bust his hump on every single shift and will do anything to make sure his team comes out victorious. Guys like that only come around once in a while and the Isles have to make sure they do everything in their power to hold on to him.

The Jason Blake situation however, is a little different. I mean, I love the guy as a player, but I’m still a little pissed about how he decided to complain about his contract to the media during the team’s playoff run last season. That combined with the fact that his asking price seems to go up every day and he’s not getting any younger, I think the Isles may need to let Blake go somewhere else for a lot more money.

Also, with guys like Guerin and Gomez available, the Isles may not even have to focus on keeping Blake, who chances are, won’t score 40 goals again in his career on any other team but the Isles.

Decision time is coming. Let’s just hope if the Isles can’t keep Smyth and Blake, they pull an ace out of their sleeves.

Posted under Isles Thoughts 2007

Unlike the many isles fans who were happier than a pig in crap when the news of Sean Bergenheim’s signing broke early this week, I was a bit more skeptical. In addition, hearing what came out of Garth Snow’s mouth after the signing scared me a little bit as well.

“Sean’s speed, skill and tenacity make him a perfect fit for the team we’re putting together,” said Snow on the Islanders official website. “We’re looking forward to him being an important player for us this season and for years to come. We also know Sean is a player that our fans have come to love because of his work ethic and passion for the game.”

All I could think about after reading this was that guys like Blake Comeau, Jeff Tambellini and Drew Fata had an extremely hard time breaking into the lineup last year, unless there was an injury and Robert Nilsson and Ryan O’Marra were basically given away [unless Smyth signs with the Isles] so they could go get playing time somewhere else, due to Nolan’s love for playing veterans instead of youngsters. While I do agree with Snow that Bergenheim has the potential to be an important player on the Isles over the next few years, he hasn’t shown us nearly enough in his time on the Island yet for us to label him anything but a first round flop.

Looking at the other picks that came out of the 2002 draft, guys like Alex Steen, Cam Ward, Joffrey Lopul, Ryan Whitney, Joni Pitkanen, Jay Bouwmeester, Rick Nash, Kari Lehtonen and Long Island’s favorite son, Chris Higgins, one thing becomes obvious; these players have developed much faster and are now helping their teams much more than Bergenheim has helped the Isles.

I’m not saying that Bergenheim can’t be a better player than these guys, but considering the fact that he still hasn’t shed his prospect status, five years after being drafted, he’s going to have a ton of work ahead of him this offseason if he wants to sway the consensus that he isn’t the player that the Isles think he is.

Sure he had a pretty damn good season in Sweden last year and in Bridgeport the year before, but that’s not the NHL. Hopefully, he can show Nolan what kind of player he is during camp and earn a spot on this team. In the wake of Alexei Yashin’s buyout and the possible loss of both Ryan Smyth and Jason Blake, the Isles will be starved for players with some punch offensively. Simply put, they need Bergenheim to produce.

Nothing would make me happier than seeing Bergie score 20 goals and add 20 helpers in his first full NHL season. We know he has the talent, but can he come through?

Posted under Isles Thoughts 2007

When players you grew up watching start to retire, you know you’re getting old.

First it was Adam Oates and Ray Bourque and I remember my goatee was finally starting to grow in the way I wanted. Then it was Bret Hull and I noticed I’ve officially stopped growing. Now at 23, with the retirement of one of the most underrated players of all-time and my all-time favorite Islander, Pierre Turgeon, I’ve noticed another thing about myself…hockey, aside from my beautiful girlfriend, is my mistress and one of the biggest joys in my life and living without every summer becomes a more painful endeavor every time.

That being said, not having it around for the past few weeks and next two months is going to be tougher than eating a five dollar steak.

Sure, the Stanley Cup playoffs were entertaining and given the fact that I’m covering the Brooklyn Cyclones again this summer, I’ll have plenty of work ahead of me, but that just doesn’t change the fact that there’s no more hockey for the next few months. Add on top of it that my favorite hockey player of all-time just retired and I’m a pretty bummed out dude.

Even though his game took a dive over the last five years of his career, I still think that Turgeon should still make the hall of fame. Players who score 1000 points and 500 goals don’t come around often and despite the fact that the guy never won a ring, the selection committee should look past those things when Pierre is eligible, I hope.

I mean, I’m sure that many of you guys would agree when I say that if Turgeon was never hit by Dale Hunter during the ’93 playoffs against the Capitals, he may have scored a lot more points in his career and the Islanders could have won the cup. After that cheap shot, the Turgeon that I and thousands of other Islander fans knew just wasn’t there anymore. Sure he was still an amazing passer with great vision on the ice, but he just wasn’t the same dynamic, franchise-player that he was during that magical 93 season.

If the people that make the decisions in the hockey hall of fame take all of that into consideration and see that he still put together an amazing NHL career, despite all of the obstacles the guy had to overcome, I think Turgeon will find himself in the hall of fame…hopefully.

On another note,

Am I the only person that is going crazy wondering what the Islanders are going to do with Jason Blake and Ryan Smyth? And what are all these rumors about Sheldon Souray and Bryan McCabe floating around the net? With a few weeks left to go until Smyth and Blake can start talking to other clubs, the Islanders need o buckle down and see what it is they want to do with these guys.

If that wasn’t enough, the Islanders will also have to see if they want to keep a few other players, such as Tom Poti, Viktor Kozlov and Arron Asham, who will be free agents as well.

Seems to me that there is a slight chance that the Isles may have an almost entirely different team next year, which will be younger and much grittier, falling in line with what Ted Nolan wants to do with the team. As far as the Blake and Smyth situation goes, I think both of these guys have to be locked up, but I don’t think the Islanders will be able to give them both what they want. If that happens, I think they definitely have to lock up a solid secondary scoring threat like Kozlov and will have to go out and look for someone else to provide some more offense.

Tom Poti is another guy I think the Isles should hold on to, but after the solid season he had last year, he may want to go somewhere else and cash in. If the Islanders can pick up someone else with his kind of makeup for cheaper, then I say by all means, but that doesn’t replace his leadership abilities either. While I love the offensive ability of Souray and McCabe, I think they need to step up their defensive player before they can be able to be the kind of steady player Poti is.

Maybe I’m out of mind on this one, or maybe I’ve just seen Souray and McCabe beat on defense way too many times on Sports Center the past few seasons.

Either way you look at it, the Isles are going to have some very important decisions to make in the next few weeks.

Hopefully they’re the kind that can take this team past the first round of the playoffs, because I’m getting old already.

Posted under Isles Rumors 2007

Upon waking up this morning, I noticed that I had a nasty looking whitehead on my chin. After my post-wakeup scratch and yawn like Simon Pegg in “Shaun of the Dead,” I proceeded to head to the bathroom mirror, where I popped that pimple like no pimple has ever been popped before, ending what could have been an eyesore and a distraction for weeks if not kept under control.

Little did I know as I was doing that, Charles Wang and the New York Islanders were popping the biggest pimple in the organization, one Alexei Yashin, effectively changing the entire motif and outlook for next year and the future of hockey on Long Island. Buying out the former superstar’s contract for $17.63 million, Wang and the Islanders will be hit with a modest $2.2 million against their salary cap for the next eight seasons. In my opinion, this is probably the smartest thing Wang could have done in this situation, since their hands were pretty tied up in this situation.

I mean, seriously, the Islanders got themselves in quite a conundrum here. They had a former superstar that just didn’t fit in with their plans and on top of all of that, he doesn’t seem to want to give his all every night, prompting the fans to get infuriated as well. If Yashin was scoring 85 points a year and still had this kind of passion-less demeanor on the ice, I’m sure that Isles fans wouldn’t have been so tough on him.

It seems that over the past few weeks, Wang has been listening to Ace of Base, because I think he saw “The Sign.” Supposedly, ticket sales for next season weren’t where they should have been and I know for a fact that a petition was going around the net that was pleading Wang to let Yashin go [Sorry I didn’t sign it guys, but I am a journalist, it’s bad enough that I’m a fan of the team, that more than enough of a conflict of interest]. Those two things, combined with that fact that many believe Ryan Smyth doesn’t want to be a part of any team that has Yashin on it probably sealed the deal.

I know it must have been a tough decision for Wang, who was a big fan of the former Islander captain, but that’s how real life is. The guy failed to do his job every single year he was on this team to score a point per game and was incredibly inconsistent. Sure I mean, there were times when Yashin looked unstoppable, but for the most part, he never had the passion that this team needed to get out of the first round of the playoffs. His reign as Islander captain was also a joke as his play on the ice stayed exactly the same and he was never going to be able t be the vocal leader the team needed to evolve into something much more inspiring.

Making the playoffs four out of the past five years still hasn’t changed the fact that the Islanders are still the Rodney Dangerfield’s of the NHL. Getting Yashin out of the way is the first step in making sure this team gets the respect they deserve. Now all they have to do is pickup the right players that can make the team better.

During this season, when Yashin started out so strong, I thought that finally this guy had woken up. Damn was I wrong on that one. In the end, Yashin was like the beautiful woman with a bi-polar personality, you never knew what you were going to get from him on any given day. If things were good, then alright, but when things were bad, they were really atrocious. But given the circumstance that things had a propensity of eventually getting good again, you tend to give that person another shot.

After a half decade of missed opportunities, I’m happy to say that Alexei Yashin can go shoot pucks for someone else.

Posted under Isles Thoughts 2007

I’m sure that all of you have heard by now that Mike Milbury has stepped down as Senior VP as the New York Islanders, but will still be a special advisor to Isles owner Charles Wang and will work on “special” projects. What this all means for the Islanders I really can’t say, because I have no idea, but I know this much; the Milbury era wasn’t the brightest in Islanders history and I’m sure Milbury and the organization are happy to be moving in a different direction.

Those words were pretty much echoed by Mike Bossy on the Islanders website the other day:

“You see, the Mike Milbury I got to know was not what I expected. I truly believe that Mike the GM was the same as Mike the VP. Passionate, hard-working and always wanting to make the right decision. Sometimes in life we make decisions based on the climate at the time. I’m sure if you were to sit down with Mike today he may want to reverse a couple of the trades he made back when he was GM but those days are gone. Mike is turning the page and starting a new chapter for himself. I wish him only the best of luck.”

As for me, I wasn’t a big fan of Mike Milbury the GM and my physical interaction with him wasn’t very good either. Covering Islanders prospect camp in 2005, I asked to talk to him numerous times and was shunned every single time with a myriad of excuses. Nevertheless, I don’t harbor any bad feelings towards the guy because that’s how the business works and if I could get a buck for every time someone said they didn’t have the time to talk, I’d be having lunch at Outback Steakhouse right now instead of sitting in dining room writing this.

However, what I do harbor bad feelings about are the numerous trades the guy made during his tenure as GM, such as trading away guys like Todd Bertuzzi, Bryan McCabe, Roberto Luongo, Ziggy Palffy and a bevy of other guys that could have produced much more than some of the players on the teams he put together. In addition, most of the high draft picks over the years that the organization have picked under Millbury’s supervision, such as Kristian Kudroc, Mathieu Biron, Sean Bergenheim and Branislav Mezei have all been flops or haven’t been given an opportunity to prove themselves.

For a few years, it was almost hell watching all of these players turn into superstars with other teams. One can only wonder how things would have turned out with the Isles could have had Bertuzzi on a line with Palffy and McCabe at the point, but that’s just wishful thinking. If the Islanders would have gotten something back for those players, instead of an underachieving Olli Jokinen and players like Felix Potvin and Trevor Linden, who never wanted to be here in the first place, things wouldn’t have been so bad, but that never happened.

With player acquisitions and the drafting of players being the two most important roles of a GM and Milbury not going an above average job at either [Neil Smith was the Isles GM when they drafted Kyle Okposo last season and signed Mike Sillinger and Brendan Witt], I think it’s a fair assumption to make that Islander fans are happy to see Milbury out of any position that could have him make personnel decisions regarding the team.

Posted under Isles Thoughts 2007