Tue 25 Dec 2007
This post has been inevitable for a few months now. I just had to wait long enough for the numbers to basically prove the way I felt.
Originally, you can imagine how I felt about this team in the beginning of August, seeing players Ryan Smyth, Tom Poti, Jason Blake, Alexei Yashin, Viktor Kozlov, Arron Asham and Randy Robitaille part ways.
However, looking back, even though Bill Guerin, Mike Comrie and Ruslan Fedotenko haven’t been as consistent as many would have liked, the play of the players from last season has been much worse.
If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself.
Through 36 games in Russia, Yashin has 26 points and already has 45 minutes in penalties. While I haven’t seen him play this season, those numbers confirm something. Yashin has either lost whatever amount of passion he had left for the game, or had lost a step. For the hardcore Islander fan, seeing Yashin play this way is like a sigh of relief. If this guy was lighting up the Russian league after the Isles paid him to go find a home somewhere else and then couldn’t sign Blake or Smyth, things would be rough for Garth Snow.
However 26 points in 36 games aren’t exactly horrible, as they’re quite comparable to Comrie’s numbers, they weren’t worth what the Isles were paying Yashin. The same thing goes for Jason Blake’s play with the Leafs this season. After scoring 40 goals with the Isles last season, the winger has only lit the lamp five times. Signing with Toronto this offseason because he wanted to play with a legitimate playoff contender every season, [fitting because they didn’t make the playoffs the season before and haven’t won a Stanley Cup in how long?] Blake now finds himself on a team that’s only one game over .500.
The same thing goes for Viktor Kozlov and Tom Poti, who arguably had the best seasons of their careers with the Isles last season. Leaving the Island to become a part of a new-look Washington Capitals team, Kozlov and Poti have a combined three goals and 32 points in 66 games. All of a sudden, it looks like the Islanders made out better with Josef Vasicek and a more responsible Chris Campoli, who have a combined 13 goals and 31 points in 68 games. Either way, the Islanders haven’t been hurt by the loss of Poti and Kozlov.
Continuing the trend of under-performing former Isles, Robitaille only has 10 points in 26 games with the Senators this season and Asham has four goals and seven points in 35 games with the Devils.
Ryan Smyth however, has been a different story. 28 points in 33 games is pretty much right where he should be at this point in the season, but that’s what happens when you play with Joe Sakic every night. If Smyth WAS still on the Island, who would he be playing with?
The only other player who has played reasonably well after leaving the team is Richard Zednik, who has nine goals and seven assists for the Panthers this season, after reveling in mediocrity in 10 games for the Isles last season.
However, nine goals in almost half a season aren’t going to buy you anything in this league. As a matter of fact, it never would.
So the next time you feel the need to complain about the Islanders lack of scoring this season, don’t think for one second that they would have been this Stanley Cup winning team with the players they had.
That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
December 25th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
asham would have been a better signing then simon, he’s younger and is one tough son of a bitch, and the shot. and compared to simons pts,asham is missed.
December 25th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Tell me about it. Why was this such a difficult post to finish? Took me a month, at the least.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:20 am
When you’re asking questions like, “If Smyth WAS still on the Island, who would he be playing with?” I can’t see why you’re simultaneously praising the team’s personnel decisions.
On some level, I agree that, for instance, Blake isn’t worth the contract he got. However, it’s impossible to know how productive these players would’ve been in our system for another year, and the Isles are most certainly suffering from a lack of top-level talent on this team.
The big exception here is that I really miss Tom Poti. Maybe he didn’t want to play here, but he got $0.5M more per year than Sutton got from us, and we’re really missing his all-around game. Berard, clearly, is not up to the task of taking his PP minutes, and Poti played solid defense on top of that–unlike Berard and Bergeron, he wasn’t getting scratched because of miscues in his own end.
More generally, I’m concerned with the way the team has approached signing free agents. We keep giving players one-year deals, they end up with a career year playing for Nolan, and then they sign elsewhere. If we’re going to assume that Nolan can help these guys overachieve, why not give the Potis, Kozlovs, and Vasiceks longer deals so that we don’t need to go fishing for potential overachievers every year.
JKP
December 26th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
JKP, it’s not praise of the organization. It’s just the truth. Who would Smyth be playing with if he signed here instead of Colorado? There is no way he’d be as successful here.
I also agree with what you’re saying about the one-year contracts, but when you have a history of making horrible decisions with long-term deals, I guess this is there way of trying to right those wrongs. I’m not defending it by any means. I would have loved to have Poti instead of Sutton. But after a subpar year before he signed ith the Isles, there was no way to know he was going ot be that successful. The same thing goes for Kozlov.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
The “who would he play with question” is, to me, irrelevant because it basically says that there’s no point in our signing any player, especially top level talent. You’re probably right that Smyth would be less productive on this team, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have signed him. Maybe having Smyth on the team would’ve enticed another top forward to come play with him.