Make his teammates better.

Under Weight’s tutelage, not only is Bill Guerin a better player, but every player he’s played with has been better when they’re on the ice with him. That’s not to say that Weight has been a miracle worker, but he has been a near a point a game player this season and has Guerin on pace for a 30-goal season. I’m also sure that youngsters the likes of Sean Bergenheim, Kyle Okposo and Josh Bailey are getting schooled after every great pass and harassed after every foul up. Weight is that kind of player.

That’s not too shabby a deal for everyone involved if you ask me.

As well as being a positive influence on and off the ice by providing results, my favorite thing about Weight is that he’s got the character and spunk of a winner. When the team is winning, he’s got a huge smile on his face and you can see that he’s really enjoying himself out there. He’s like a kid out there. When the team is being outplayed though, he looks pissed and is yelling at people, trying to make the most of every word, in an effort to turn the game and team around.

That kind of ability isn’t found in every player and Islanders are lucky to have him because of it.

Now, I know that if he continues this pace this season, he’ll be on his way to a 60-70 point season, which will of course have plenty of teams enthralled. I’m sure a team like the Blackhawks, a team looking for that something extra to get them into the playoffs, would love a veteran leader to help their promising young stars through the rest of the season. However, in spite of what the Islanders should be able to get for Weight, which I think should be a second round pick and a decent prospect, is outweighed [no pun intended] by what he can teach the youngsters on this team.

Now I’m sure you guys have read Chris Botta’s post yesterday where Weight said he’d prefer to stay here and doesn’t want to be traded and brought back like a hired gun. With that being said, why wouldn’t you want to keep him now! This is a guy that believes in the system and wants to finish his career here. Why not make it happen?

Now I understand this is a business, so what I think should go down is simple. Give the guy a one-year extension worth the same thing he’s getting paid now, but give him a few incentives for assists and games played to make it a little more worth while for him. If he says no, then you’ve done everything in your power to keep him and it wasn’t good enough. After that, all you can do is continue to play him the same way you have been down the stretch. By doing that, you’ll pull up his value. Then, you see if you can throw in something else with him, perhaps a certain defenseman that isn’t happy with the system the Islanders are playing, and see if you can hustle a late first round pick out of the deal.

What do you guys think?

Even in my darkest days as an Islanders fan, I’ve never seen things turn this sour. I mean, things were awfully bad during Butch Goring’s tenure as coach, but let’s be honest here, those teams had no chance. They were full of youngsters, with washed-up veterans that wanted nothing but a paycheck. There was no Bill Guerin, Brendan Witt or Trent Hunter. However, in spite of the markedly different lineup the Islanders have this season, things feel just as dire.

Taking a look at some of my old posts, particularly the “Worst Case Scenario” post I did before the season started, I came to see that this is in-fact the worst case scenario for this team right now.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this I came up before the season started:

1- A change in philosophy if the team is close to a playoff spot at the trading deadline
2- Radek Martinek or Brendan Witt going down for any prolonged period of time
3- An uber inefficient powerplay…again
4- Rushing Josh Bailey
5-Mike Sillinger misses most of the season again
In my “Hopes for 2009” post, I outlined five things I wanted to see this season.
Take a look at this list:
1- Kyle Okposo’s continued development.
2- Jeff Tambellini solidifying a role on the team.

3- Bill Guerin and Doug Weight having solid seasons.

4- Chris Campoli and Mark Streit both become factors on the powerplay.
5- Rick DiPietro stays healthy all season.
Taking a look at these two lists, it’s easy to see that this season, so far, has been an absolute disaster. Aside from Weight and Streit playing well, everything else has fell to pieces. KO has been on the shelf too long to really assess, while injuries to Sillinger, DiPietro, Witt and Martinek have decimated the Islanders defensive ability, character and most importantly, heart. Tambellini’s play has been a joke as well, while Witt’s comments have shown some unwillingness in the Isles’ Over-Speed system.
With that being said, I take us back to the original question I proposed: When will this losing streak come to an end?
While I’ve been willing to throw around my opinion with a certain amount of confidence all season, regardless of the outcome, this is one that I have no idea on. I really wish I did.
Only the Islanders know the answer right now.

I’m not even sure on that one either.

This is the third Christmas this site has been around.

What first started off as a way for a young college student to earn some extra [practically a tiny piece of] bread while writing about his favorite team in the entire world has slowly turned into a way for a college professor and working journalist to earn some extra [practically a tiny piece of] bread while writing about his favorite team in the entire world. During that time, I’ve seen the Isles go from a playoff team, missing a few pieces and being able to make the second round, to a team riddled with injuries, to a team that is downright poor.

I’ve seen players the likes of Jason Blake have career years and guys like Miroslav Satan have season’s so unproductive that they were almost finished professionally because of it. I’ve seen players like Wade Dubielewicz and Joey MacDonald inspire me with their hard work and guys the likes of Chris Simon and Sean Hill nearly break my heart for not using their heads on and off the ice.

In spite of everything that’s happened over the past three year’s with this team though, it’s been a complete blast. Getting to interview people such as Jiggs McDonald, Ruslan Fedotenko, Bruno Gervais, Bob Probert and Ross Bernstein alone over the past three years have made this journey an extremely enjoyable one, but reading your comments every day and trying my hardest to satisfy your needs and entertain you simultaneously has made this one of the most rewarding endeavors I’ve partaken in since I started doing this.

So rather than waste any more time in this post, let me just say thank you. Thank you for reading every day. Thank you for commenting when you feel the need to. Thank you for just being yourselves.

Happy Holidays.

Okay, time to get to business.

Right now, I feel the thing this team needs more than anything is a game against the Rangers. That’s the only thing that can instill the necessary passion needed for this team to thrive on the ice.

That, however is a two-sided coin.

They could end up looking so bad against the Blueshirts that I’ll have to deal with idiotic Ranger fans at work for the next two weeks talking how good their team is. Forget it when I tell them that their defense is a joke and that they don’t have enough offense to hold water with any of the super powers in the Western Conference. It won’t change the fact that this team is dead in the water right now. Nothing short of half the team stepping up their games and the guys this team has on IR magically coming back and playing their hearts out can save them from ending the season even worse than the pundits thought they’d finish.

Simply put, with all the injuries this team has had, you wouldn’t blame the guy if he did.

Not having Rick DiPietro in the lineup for virtually the entire season alone gives him a get out of jail free card, but even in spite of that, Gordon hasn’t made any excuses.

“Certainly, not having your No. 1 guy for the whole year has been a unique situation,” Gordon told the AP. “It would be a unique situation for any team, but certainly, as a first-time head coach in the NHL, to not have your No. 1 guy and to have to rely so much on a guy that’s done a great job at trying to make a name for himself as a proven NHL goaltender, it certainly has been a hurdle.”

Aside from the play of Mark Streit, Joey MacDonald and Doug Weight, things like this make the season a little bit easier to deal with. Anyone who reads Chris Botta’s rock-solid Point-Blank blog, knows that Islanders GM Garth Snow is sticking with Gordon for the long-term and regardless of what any of his players say about the team’s new system, the Islanders are going to give Gordon every opportunity to make things work.

Botta also did a great job on his blog recently talking about the strides the Washington Capitals have made over the years to become the team that they have. Much like Botta, I feel the Isles may have to tank the next few seasons and bring in the right people little by little if they have any chance at turning this team into a legitimate and consistent playoff contender.

The only problem is asking Islander fans to wait isn’t exactly an easy thing to do.

Being a fan of this team over the past 15 years has been like going to OTB and betting on a bad horse simply because you feel it’s got what it takes and then seeing it break every bone in it’s body and miraculously get up and do it over again the next race. Sure, there have been some moments where this horse finished, but after last season especially, it was obvious that the horse needed to be taken out to pasture. So now, while not having a completely new pony, the Islanders have a genetic misfit that hopefully can transform itself into something dependable and entertaining over the next few seasons.

If it doesn’t, then Gordon won’t need to make excuses, because he and Snow will be out of them.

The only problem was your defense forgot to show up.

That and Josh Bailey and Kyle Okposo proved that they have a lot of growing up to do defensively.

I said in my pregame piece yesterday that the Wild defensemen needed to be watched and not allowed to make that first good pass out of the neutral zone. With that obviously not happening, combined with the Islanders inability to generate quality scoring opportunities did the Isles in once again.

However, before a terrible third period, I really liked what I saw from both Mike Comrie and Okposo, who were hustling and were at least noticeable.

Then, again, it happened.

This team is so bad in the third period that I’ve seen blind people play NHL 09 with more competence. I mean seriously, why do they break down the way they do? Is it that they’re all out of gas by the time the third period comes, or is it that they are simply not good enough? The way things are going right now, most of the pundits out there will think the later, but I think it’s something else. Simply put, this team is missing something and I think I know what it is now.

They have the wily veteran leaders in Bill Guerin and Doug Weight, they have solid role players in Andy Hilbert and Richard Park. They have a shutdown defenseman in Brendan Witt [and even Martinek when he comes back] and they have youth in Okposo, Bailey and Bergenheim. This team needs DP back in the lineup and they need a legitimate sniper, to even be at .500. Right now, they don’t have enough firepower and as good as MacDonald’s been, he’s got way too much pressure on himself right now.

The way it is right now, it won’t matter who is in net for this team until someone decides to step up.

Who will it be? Who can it be at this point?

Sutton breaks foot- This is not good news at all. Up to this point, Sutton was doing his job and was even producing more offensively than I thought he was capable of. With Radek Martinek already on the shelf, the Islanders defense is doing to be running thin for the next month.

Witt talks about Scott Gordon’s system to Newsday- Witt can say whatever he wants to say about not liking the system the Islanders play, but when you get caught pinching and it leads to a goal, much like last night, you have to think the problem lies elsewhere. The problem in actuality is Witt’s skating ability. Many wondered how Witt would fit in when the league changed the rules and even though he made it out in one piece. Scott Gordon’s “Over-speed” takes the up-tempo game of the NHL to an even faster pace and Witt feels out of place physically and mentally. In order for this system to work, Witt needs to either adjust his game, or go somewhere that will accept him the way he is right now, which is one hell of of a stay at home defenseman. I hate to even say things like this, but that seems to be the case right now.

If Gordon sticks around for a few seasons and all indications are that he will, players that are brought to the team in the future won’t be in the same mold as Witt.

That, I think, is something to write about.

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Logan calls it a lesson learned. I, on the other hand, call it the Islanders organization finally using common sense.

In this world and especially in the world of sports, there are people in this world that regardless of how talented they are, don’t listen. They don’t listen when you tell them they can’t do things a certain way. It may be arrogance, it may be vision, but regardless, they fail to acknowledge that other people besides themselves may have the answers to the questions that are plaguing them. Some of them end up prevailing and become trend setters in the process. The others, however, take things too far and never make the most of their potential and become a footnote in history; the topic of late-night discussion in shady bars amongst the legions of sour fans whose hearts they broke.

After consecutive 30-win seasons, it looked like DP was headed down the first path I mentioned, but after a slew of surgeries and injuries over the past two seasons, it seems like he may be on another.

This recent decision of his however, may have him stuck in the middle.

The fact that Scott Gordon and Garth Snow are taking the initiative here and are letting him practice a bit before he comes back, while keeping Yann Denis on the bench, is proof that Islanders management has learned their lesson as well. For too long have they allowed DP to take matters into his own hands, on and off the ice. Still only 27 years old, the past two years won’t mean a thing if DP can come back healthy this season and help this team get rid of the water in the basement.

“The expectation is that he’ll be practicing with us by the weekend,” coach Scott Gordon told Newsday yesterday. “He’ll skate [Friday in St. Paul and Saturday in Nashville]. We’ll get into that routine. Until we see where he’s at, I would expect at least a week of practices.”

That’s exactly what I want to hear right now. Things are bad enough with this team and the last thing the organization and fans need is to see DP ruin his career before he hits his prime. He is supposed to be a pivotal piece in the puzzle and he deserves an opportunity to prove that he can help this team get their respect back. As I told you before, once a few of the other guys get back and DP gets back in the swing of things, that’s when the season begins for me.

I’m sure DiPietro feels the same way.

If any of the other team’s in the league didn’t pick up the one time All-Star, it was because he was coming off the worst season of his career and one that made it look like he was on his last leg.

That’s why many GM’S around the league and Islander fans alike thought Islanders management was crazy when they were the ones that brought him in this summer. However, Weight has easily been the team’s best player this season and has already proved his value, scoring 27 points in 30 games, two more than he scored of all last season.

Number don’t tell the whole story though. Simply put, you couldn’t ask for more from this guy. Alongside Streit, Weight has been something special on the powerplay and has done everything in his power to make sure the Islanders don’t embarrass themselves every night.

Now he’s just four points away from a milestone that every single hockey player from Pee Wee’s to Pros, dreams about.

1,000 points.

There’s just one problem, the Islanders are beginning to make good on the thoughts of every wannabe NHL pundit on the Internet and are playing themselves in a whole that not even the Disney version of the Might Ducks could get themselves out of. Sure they have Weight, who is their Charlie Conway and Trent Hunter, Bill Guerin and Streit are having solid seasons, but this team needs a lot more and fast or else this season is over.

And before the All-Star break.

That’s what makes this guy’s achievement a little bittersweet.

Even though Weight is a fun-loving guy who having a good time this season, you get the feeling that things could be so much better if the Islanders started winning.

“To play as long as I have and to be successful and to be coming up on that mark, I’m very proud of it and very excited about it,” Weight told Newsday. “It sounds like I’m answering in the politically correct way, but I want to mix it in with some wins. It’s more enjoyable around your team.”

It’s not like we didn’t all see this coming though, as all the fan boy blogs and even the guys secretly pulling for the team were hesitant to say where they thought this team was going to finish this season. A few weeks ago, I thought this team had the sneakiness to get into the playoffs.

Now it looks like Weight’s moment may be ruined.

What can the Islanders do to change that?

That’s the question plaguing the Islanders right now. Not to say that Sean Avery is exactly a quick fix, but he may be the injection of spunk this team needs right now. Over the past few games as well, the Islanders have put Jon Sim, who, let’s be fair here, is a poor man’s Avery, on waivers, making it obvious his services are no longer needed. Considering Avery isn’t extremely overpriced at four million per, do the Islanders take the plunge?

I know how many of you feel about Avery and I’d be lying if I said I was a fan of his antics. However, if the Islanders are to part ways with Sim, they don’t exactly have a youngster to plug into Sim’s spot. Considering where the Isles are as far as cap space goes, it’s definitely a risk they can afford to take fiscally. I just don’t know if Avery’s prescence in the locker room would be worth it. Just the fact that Mike Comrie goes out with Hillary Duff seems like it could be enough to set off a disaster in the Islanders room.

Like I’ve been saying over the past couple of days, I feel like this team is headed in a downward spiral that needs to be stopped. Can Avery help to stop it?

Simply put, hearing some of the things Scott Gordon has said as of late have been downright scary and haven’t stopped me from feeling that this team needs to be shaken up a bit.

“You say, ‘I don’t want to kill them in practice and not get it in the game,’” Gordon told Newsday. “Well, now I’m at the point where it doesn’t really matter. This needs to be addressed, and it probably should have been addressed three games ago.”

And what happens when your coach feels this way? Mike Sillinger strains his groin from being worked too hard in practice. Even more great news right? I don’t know guys, you listen to guys like Sean Bergenheim and Richard Park talk to the media and they say the team is still confident and they’re battling, but it just doesn’t feel that way.

The way the team has played, going from surprisingly good to downright awful over the span of just three weeks, makes me feel that something has to be done to get this team going.

So considering that, I take you back to the original question, do the Isles take a chance with Avery?

During a few of the earlier games this season, where Mac’s lack of positioning played a part in several goals, I would have to say yes.

However, with guys like Brendan Witt, Radek Martinek and Andy Sutton all out of the lineup, I think MacDonald did as good a job as anyone in the NHL… and that includes DiPietro.

Nonetheless, it would be idiotic to think that in spite of his injuries that DP isn’t still the Islanders franchise player. Without him, they haven’t been .500 team.

While it would take a toll on any player to see his team floundering without him, I think it’s been extra tough on DP, especially with the huge contract and constant expectations put on him.

“I’m not even sure I can put into words how hard it’s been,” DiPietro told Newsday. “It was a long summer, a lot of rehabbing, and a lot of things to get ready for this season, and then to have it not work out like it did in the beginning and have to go back and do it all over again—it’s tough. Definitely you realize how much you enjoy playing the game and the competition of being in net for the games, but now I’m rested and maybe we can go on a run to finish out the last half of the season.”

What is capable of at this point though?

Over the past two seasons, DP has had surgery on both knees and his hip. Can he still be the goaltender the Islanders need at this point? Can he be one of the players that helps lead them to the promise land of consistent entry in the NHL playoffs every season? Can he be the one that takes this team from semi-laughing stock and gets them the respect the need to get a new building as well?

I don’t know.

That’s the biggest problem for me as well. Over the past few weeks, I haven’t been able to escape the feeling that this team is missing something. It’s obvious that Kyle Okposo, Jeff Tambellini and Mike Comrie aren’t that something and we all know how much Radek Martinek is missed right now, but he isn’t the key to this team.

Again, is that key DiPietro?

“What do you do?”

The question here has nothing to do with saving a bus with a bomb on it or saving humanity from aliens.

In fact, it is much more important than that.

What do you do when your team just isn’t good enough?

In all honesty, I hate writing things like this, especially about the one and only team that I still root for. Being a journalist does that to you after a while though, especially after you’ve covered a few teams in a few different sports like I have. But I digress, this site is supposed to give me the carte blanche to express myself without any journalistic veil over my eyes, or my heart. Rather than wax any more formalities, let me just get down to business.

Over the past few games, I can’t escape the feeling that this team just isn’t good enough. Six games ago, I felt like they could sneak into the playoffs. No other team, not even the Mets, has ever made me feel that way so quickly. Why? I’ll tell you exactly why. They have to play close to perfect hockey every night and hope the opposition plays poorly. In a league with the kind of parity the NHL has, that’s just not going to happen.

It took one of the biggest bloopers in NHL history for the Islanders to beat a team like the Canadiens and even a sloppy period and a half by a solid team like the Flyers wasn’t good enough.

It also feels like a lot of players are playing better hockey this season than they were before and it’s still not good enough. So far this season, Andy Hilbert has gone above and beyond anything anyone could have expected him to do and the Isles still can’t get to .500. Richard Park gives his heart on every single shift too an he too can’t give this team the spark they so desperately need.

So what can the Isles do?

I personally believe that the Isles have to combine the quality play of guys like Trent Hunter, Bill Guerin, Doug Weight and Mark Streit with youngsters and struggling veterans like Jon Sim, Sean Bergenheim and Josh Bailey. Put players in a situation where they have someone who is going to push them hard on every shift, so that they are accountable for all of their actions.

Here are the lines I believe could get this team going.

Forwards

Comeau- Weight- Guerin
Bergenheim- Bailey- Hunter
Hilbert- Sillinger- Park
Fritz [now that Sim has been put on waivers]- Thompson [once he comes back from the flu]- Jackman

Defense

Witt- Streit
Campoli-Meyer
Sutton- Pock/Callahan

I don’t know what else could be done at this point guys. Simply put, they are running out of excuses.

57 games in the AHL last season= 38 goals.

Simply put, something is wrong here. The Islanders know it. That’s why they sent him to Bridgeport on Saturday.

Now, the rest of the NHL knows it too.

But more importantly, Tambellini knows it.

Over the course of the season, unlike the rest of the youngsters on the Isles, who have shown some type of progression, Tamby has been a wreck. Obviously suffering from a lack of confidence, Tambellini hasn’t been a factor at all.

“If you start playing mind games with yourself, you’re only hurting yourself,” Tambellini told Newsday. “It is what it is. I don’t know what to tell you. I go day-by-day and I just play each game as a new game. I can’t worry too much about the past. It is what it is. I can’t really dwell on it.”

Well Jeff, you kind of have to start worrying about it. You’re a former first round pick that has performed great at every level, except the NHL. You’re not exactly 21 any more either. In order for you to stay at this level and be more than a fourth liner, you have to change your game. Because obviously, what you’ve been doing this season hasn’t been working.

The way Blake Comeau played on Saturday, with passion, intensity and desperation, is exactly the way Tambellini should be playing. It’s easy to see that he’s never going to be a power forward or a role player. He’s a sniper through and through. With his skill set, he has to score or else he’s going to be stuck in the AHL forever. Right now, he lacks the desire to get himself to the places on the ice where he can score and takes garbage shots from all weird angles, hoping to catch a break.

So far this season, it hasn’t happened.

It hasn’t been because the team hasn’t given him an opportunity either. It would have been the case last season, but not now.

So what can the Islanders do about this?

Maybe a reality check in the AHL will wake him up, maybe it won’t.

I personally think he needs to have an epiphany of some sorts and soon. Otherwise, Comeau will finish this season here and Tambellini will be lost in the shuffle, either playing out his days as a depth player with the Isles or hopping from team to team that is willing to give him a chance to live up to his promise.

“We all want him to score,” coach Scott Gordon told the Associated Press. “There’s definitely a lack of confidence that probably has built up, which is natural. I’m sure he’s frustrated.”

Great, just great.

In all fairness, Okposo was starting to play well, especially alongside another first rounder in Josh Bailey, but he wasn’t playing like Mike Bossy. He wasn’t playing like Steve Thomas either. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even in Wendel Clark’s league. Nevertheless, for a short while, it was pretty entertaining to see what the future could look like with those two on the ice together. At any rate, those euphoric desires will have to be quenched in other ways until he’s healthy again.

Luckily, Trent Hunter is easily having the best season of his career and is finally taking more high quality shots. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even though he’s a good defensive forward and doesn’t have great skating ability, this guy is not a third liner. Anything but. He should be a 20 goal guy every season, regardless of who he plays with, especially with his stick handling ability and shot. On pace for 30 biscuits potted thus far, the next Islander captain [or maybe Witt] is proving that you can be a good player with an abundance of grit and hard work.

The same thing goes for Bill Guerin, Doug Weight, Andy Hilbert and Mark Streit, who are all proving that they can produce the way Islanders management believes they can. Once the majority of the youngsters do, I think this team is going to be a lot of fun to watch. Once Comrie and Okposo come back as well, I really feel that the Islanders can have four solid lines that can contribute on both sides of the ice. That may mean that a guy Jeff Tambellini would ride the pine in favor of someone who shows up every night and wants to play like Tim Jackman [or maybe Blake Comeau]. Some people may not like that, but in the end, those are the breaks baby.

You can only implement a true youth movement with players that are truly ready or close to. While Sean Bergenheim and Chris Campoli [and even Okposo and Frans Neilsen before they got injured] have shown flashes of brilliance, Tamby looks like he playing Dungeons and Dragons out there. No poise or drive. He either takes chances in both ends, trying to make the big play, or takes garbage shots that have no chance at going in, effectively rolling the dice with his chances of getting quality ice-time.

If he continues along these lines, he’ll not only lose ice time, he may lose his spot on the roster as well.

Sillinger’s return- Like I said yesterday, this is going to be good on several fronts for the Islanders. Nevertheless, I think Isles head coach Scott Gordon summed it up pretty nicely a few days ago when he said getting Silly back was like a mid-season trade.

Martinek reinjured? - According to Greg Logan’s blog, Radek Martinek will be out after banging his shoulder up against the Senators.  With Bruno Gervais also injured, it looks like Thomas Pock will get another chance to prove himself after clearing waivers a few days ago. In my opinion, Martinek has got to have the worst luck in the world. It’s like he’s got a black cat in his hockey bag or something. If he doesn’t start either taking the necessary steps to make sure he doesn’t get injured again without sacrificing his play in the offseason or taking showers with garlic shampoo, he’s going to continue to get injured and never be the player many Islander fans thought he’d be after 23 great games in 2002.

In other Islanders news, the team will get another injection of toughness as both Mitch Fritz and Tim Jackman. However, the question remains as to who sits if both of them or even one of them is in uniform on Thursday.

Cough:: Jeff Tambellini ::Cough.

Nothing against the kid, but he hasn’t shown a spark and considering how good Andy Hilbert and Richard Park have been thus far, he’s out of roles. This team doesn’t need another tiny sparkplug on the bottom two lines. They need another 20-goal scorer and as of right now, Tamby looks out of place.

Laviolette Canned? Well, it looks like former Islander coach Peter Laviolette will be spending the holiday season watching hockey at home, rather than coaching it with the Carolina Hurricanes. More ironic however is the fact that he has been replaced by Paul Maurice, the coach he replaced five years ago. As far as I’m concerned, Laviolette is still an excellent coach and if Alexei Yashin hadn’t played golf with Charles Wang every weekend, Lavy would have never lost control of his players and find the pink slip. And as far as that statement is concerned, I feel that while the Islanders teams he coached were good, they were never good enough to do more than he did with them.

Those teams really needed another legitimate scorer and a shutdown defenseman to compliment all the offense they had on the blue line. That is the real reason why Steve Stirling [who is now off coaching in Germany of all places] didn’t win a Stanley Cup here either. It had nothing to do with Laviolette. Sadly, just like the Islanders have had bad luck with players over the past 15 seasons, they’ve had just as much bad luck with coaches. Not keeping Laviolette and cleaning up the mess around him will always be one of them.

Well, here are my thoughts:

Firstly, the Islanders will instantly get better in the faceoff circle. Always one of the best faceoff guys in the league, Sillinger’s ability on the draw will help the Islanders on the powerplay and in their own end as well.

As well, the Islanders forward lines will have a bit more depth and head coach Scott Gordon can have some more fun with the combinations. I mentioned a few of the possibilities last night, but didn’t think of the Islanders powerplay featuring the likes of Sillinger, Bill Guerin, Josh Bailey, Mark Streit and Doug Weight until just now. Again, while it pales to compare to what some other team’s have, the Islanders depth is finally starting to kick in and I think because of that, the offense is going to pick up rather shortly.

On another note, once Mike Comrie comes back healthy, the Islanders will be pretty damn solid, albeit a bit on the old side, up the middle, featuring Weight, Comrie, Sillinger and Bailey. With that being said, I think they’ll eventually be able to hold their own at that position with the rest of the league.

Isles Looking at Gaborik? According to Eklund of the infamous HockeyBuzz.com, the Islanders are allegedly going after Marian Gaborik.

All I can say to that is no…no…no.

Nothing against the guy, who is without a doubt a legitimate talent in this league, but the Wild will be asking for way too much and as teams like the Penguins and Blackhawks have proven over the past few years, you don’t rebuild your fanbase by trading away high draft picks. Over the past few years, the Islanders have been lucky on a few occasions, with the Ryan Smyth trade not biting them in the rear and guys the likes of Kyle Okposo and Josh Bailey having the potential to help play a part in turning th franchise around.

Even though Gaborik is only 26, he’s not the right fit for this team, that is unless the Isles can give the Wild a host of players that don’t figure to be in their long-term plans that may be attractive.

Immediately, a player like Comrie comes to mind, but obviously, that isn’t going to be enough. Who else could this team package in without sacrificing their future? Radek Martinek? Andy Sutton? I don’t know guys. The way this team is playing this season so far, they may be able to squeak into the playoffs once they get healthy. Do they take the risk of surrendering the rest of what could be a fun season, just to bring a big name in? What would you guys do if you were Garth Snow?

If Josh Baily was a wrestler, he’d have all of those things, averaging over 17 minutes of ice time over his past six games and quickly earning the faith of Isles head coach Scott Gordon after notching five assists in his first 10 games in the NHL.

Things didn’t feel that way for Bailey however, as he feels he’s just starting to get comfty on the Island.

“Obviously, there were times I was sitting in my hotel room thinking it was almost a matter of time before I went back to junior,” Bailey told the Associated Press. “Once they told me I was staying … I told them I’m starting to get my confidence as a player.”

I’ve said before that I really like the chemistry between Doug Weight and Bill Guerin this season, but the line of Trent Hunter, Andy Hilbert and Bailey have been pretty damn solid as well. Once Sillinger comes back [he's expected to play on Thursday] the Isles have two options. They can either put Silly on a line with whoever is left from the third and fourth line, possibly Jon Sim and Jeff Tambellini, leaving the fourth line to be a solid trio of Richard Park, Nate Thompson and Tim Jackman, or they can reunite Sillinger with his old linemates in Hunter and Hilbert and see if Bailey’s play making ability can wake up Tambellini and keep Jon Sim at a 15-20 goal pace.

Either way, it should be fun to watch.

From the looks of it, Gordon feels the same way.

“I think it really comes down to the maturity of the player, and Josh is a mature player and person,” Gordon told the AP. “Like I said, he’s done everything right that we’ve asked him to do … Whoever he’s going to play with down the road is going to be a better player because he’s one of those players who can make something out of nothing. That’s an exciting thing to have because those players are hard to find.”

For my money, I’d love to see Bailey continue to work with Hunter and Hilbert. Once Kyle Okposo and Mike Comrie come back, the Isles offense can be shaken up a bit so they get the most bang for their buck, but as of right now, I wouldn’t want to mess with a good thing.

Guess we’re just going to have to see about that, but at any rate, they’re are a few players that I feel are going to get the most out of the next three days off.

Joey MacDonald- Even when the Islanders defense was without the likes of Andy Sutton, Radek Martinek and Brendan Witt, Joey Mac has done everything but bribe the opposition in order to keep this team in the mix. A few times he’s come down to earth, showing an inability to keep his feet moving in the crease, but for the most part this season, his positioning, determination and poise have been excellent.

Either way you feel about MacDonald’s play, it’s pretty hard to argue with eight wins in game in November.

“Joey’s given us a chance to win every night,” team captain Bill Guerin told the Associated Press. “That’s all you can ask from your goaltender. He’s played as well as anybody out there. He’s just a great teammate, and works his tail off every day. He deserves a lot of accolades for us being in every game.”

I still can’t believe I’m going to say this, but another guy that deserves a few days off is Andy Hilbert. Six goals already this season and a heck of a lot more polish in the offensive end have quickly proven to me that Super Andy may just have a 20-goal season in him. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this is another Jason Blake case, where the guy just needed a coach to have more confidence in him and play him in every situation. I know Ted Nolan always had a soft spot for the kid, but I never thought last season that Nolan trusted him for offense late in games when the team was in a bind. This season however, Scott Gordon seems to really trust him and because of that, Hilbert is having the best season of his NHL career.

While guys like Trent Hunter, Doug Weight, Mark Streit and Guerin have been solid as well, I really hope Mac and Hilly get a few good night’s rest under their belt before Thursday against Washington.

In other news guys, my site has been nominated on YesIslanders.com for Islanders Blog of the year! The voting takes place all month. Please stop by and throw me a vote!

Wait, what did I just say? Am I to believe that through the first 21 games, the Isles have already had five defensemen on the shelf? Am I to believe that Mark Streit and Bruno Gervais have been the only healthy D-men on this team this season?

Unfortunately, the answer to all of those questions is a resounding yes.

Because of that, it’s incredibly hard to assess what this team has done defensively so far this season.

However, it is pretty simple to see that this team is headed in the right direction in their own end.

Streit, simply put, has been a revelation in both ends this season, playing extremely well on special teams and eerily solid in his own end. After the Islanders picked him up this summer, the Canadian press had a field day, saying the Isles paid too much for his services, and stating that he was basically a fourth liner that had a penchant for contributing on the powerplay. I myself said that I didn’t think he’d score 63 points again this season, but as of right now, he’s looking to be awfully close.

[Isn't it funny how over the past few weeks, the Islanders alone have made the Canadian hockey media look like Jason Blair on truth serum?]

With Sutton, Martinek and Witt all back and healthy as well, I think the Islanders have their spine back. Now they can shutdown the top lines in the league and mix it up a bit if they have to. A few weeks ago, guys like Gervais, Streit and Campoli were playing 25 minutes a game, killing themselves in both ends. With the anchors back, those three can now play in roles more beneficial to them and because of that, I think we’ll start to see some more production from them.

I come from a mindset as a fan where I’m used to seeing multiple defensemen being able to produce offensively on a team. Growing up, I saw guys like Tom Kurvers, Jeff Norton, Uwe Krupp, Mathieu Schnieder and Bryan Berard at the point scoring their 35 plus points a season. As a teenager, I saw Roman Hamrlik, Kenny Jonsson and Adrian Aucoin do the same thing. Because of that, I fully expect guys like Campoli, Streit and hopefully even Gervais and Martinek can produce offensively to be factors. I think it’ll come a bit more naturally for he first two players I’ve mentioned, but I really feel Gervais and Martinek have a lot more to give in the offensive zone.

If they do and the Isles can continue to support Joey MacDonald, I think you’ll see a very different Islanders team the rest of this season.

Then something started to happen. After blowing a handful of third period leads, they woke up and decided to play as a cohesive unit and since then, they’ve won four out of their last five games.

Sure, they still don’t have a legitimate sniper or a point a game player, but they have enough pieces and have enough depth at defense that if they continue to play this way, they can surprise a few people.

Andy Hilbert, Doug Weight and Trent Hunter look like they’ve been reinvigorated under Scott Gordon and are proving they either are capable of more than they’ve produced in years past or their back to where they should be. In the case of Hilbert, it’s great to see the guy on pace for a 15 goal, 35 point season. I’ve said plenty of times on this site that that’s where he should be and considering what a solid job he does in the defensive end, he and Richard Park could give the team a great tandem of role players that can contribute on both ends of the ice. Weight and Hunter are both coming off years that they know they’re better than and have responded marvelously this season.

Weight looks like he did with the Blues a few years ago and looks extremely solid with Bill Guerin, who has looked good too. Hunter has been picking his shots much better than he did last season, when it felt like he was simply peppering the net. Scoring 25 goals his rookie season, Hunter should be around that total every season. I’m so sick of pundits calling him a defensive forward. The guy’s a power forward who needs someone to feed him the puck. Frans Neilsen was doing a good job of that through the early season and his injury may stunt Hunter a bit, but I feel as if he’s confident right now and will continue to produce in spite of the Great Dane’s absence.

Guys like Sean Bergenheim and Jon Sim are too proving that they can be depended on, but still have a ways to go to establish themselves. Both have great wrist shots, can skate and play a physical game, which makes them tailor-made for Gordon’s system; they just have to continue to work hard and I’m sure the goals for both of them will be there. Surely nothing in the 30-goal range of course, but if they continue to skate and get some time on the powerplay, I don’t see any reason why the both of them can’t score 15-20 goals each.

Nonetheless, the Islanders offense is still missing key contributors in Kyle Okposo, Mike Comrie and Mike Sillinger. Once those guys get back and can be healthy, the Isles offense can go from mediocre to surprising. I mean lets be fair here, this team is never going to be the Detroit Red Wings on offense, but combined with their defense and provided they continue to get the defense they have over the past few games, they can squeak into the playoffs.

Yes, I said it.

Can’t believe I did, but I did.

Scary thing is I know it’s not the Kool-aid talking either.

Sure, Mike Comrie is still nursing a hip problem and Kyle Okposo will be out for at least a week with arm problems of his own, but as I’ve said before, this team’s defense is much more important than the offense. The way Comrie and Okposo have played this season as well makes their absence from the lineup not as big a deal as it could have been if they were producing.

As long as the defense supports Joey MacDonald and he can see the puck, the Islanders should be in decent shape. The way some of the role players have responded the past few games, guys like Frans Neilsen, Jon Sim and Tim Jackman especially, it feels like this team will find a way to produce enough offense to win. That’s not something I would have gone out of my way to say a few weeks ago, but if this team continues to skate and draw penalties, I feel that players will score for this team.

Kind of funny how a few hard-earned wins will change someone’s mind eh?

With KO out, Newsday beat reporter Greg Logan believes the Isles will have an emergency callup from Bridgeport will be made, but didn’t give any ideas as to whom it might be. My money is either on Blake Comeau, who many feel should have made the team out of camp this season and has 11 points in 13 games this season, or Mike Iggulden who has 20 points in 18 games. That doesn’t mean the Isles won’t take the safer route though and go with a guy like Kurtis McLean, who also has 20 points, but is a bit older than both Comeau and Iggulden.

Regardless of who joins the team, I think that players like Trent Hunter and Doug Weight will have to continue to lead the team offensively, while Radek Martinek and Witt will have to jump right into the thick of things. These guys don’t have the luxury of waiting a few games to find themselves. The team’s top defensive duo, they will have to be on top of their game against New Jersey on Friday. Winning three in a row, the Isles have to maintain this type of play until they get healthy again.

Then after that, we’ll see what this team can really do.

As a matter of fact, I think he’s been a savior of sorts.

Up until the season started, no one thought MacDonald was capable enough to serve as the team’s backup goaltender. Much like Islanders Jeff Tambellini and Andy Hilbert, MacDonald had several solid seasons in the AHL under his belt, but had problems sticking around at the NHL level. This season however, MacDonald has been rock solid, getting better and better after every game.

Last season, I had the opportunity to cover a preseason game between the Islanders and Rangers at MSG where MacDonald played. The Isles had a ton of youngsters in the game and the Rangers featured most of their stars at the time, including Scott Gomez, Brendan Shanahan and Chris Drury, but MacDonald was still solid. It got me thinking what the future held for the kid. However, at the time, with Wade Dubielewicz backing up Rick DiPietro, Joey Mac didn’t look like he was going to crack the lineup. By the end of the season,he appeared in two games and one in particular, the 45 save effort against the Devils late in the season, confirmed in my mind that he should be given a chance.

Nonetheless, I was a huge Dubie supporter at the time and didn’t want to see the guy leave.

Right now though, I wouldn’t change the Islanders goaltending situation at all. And that includes bring DP back.

Sometimes in this sport, you have to ride the hot horse. Al Arbour is a guy that did that quite often and while the motif in the NHL over the past few years is to have one guy play 70 games, why can’t MacDonald play 30 this season and DP the rest? We know who the guy is going to be in the playoffs for this team, but if MacDonald keeps playing the way he has, and DP continues to battle injuries, it’s better to have Mac in net.

Nothing against DP, he is without a doubt the team’s most important player, but if he’s not 100 percent, he’s not going to be able to help this team. With Brendan Witt’s return possibly this weekend as well, MacDonald will have ever more support in front of him and can be even more of a force if given a chance.

From the perseverance he’s shown on the ice so far this season, you get the feeling he knows exactly what’s at stake.

“When you come in and play one or two games a year in the NHL, it’s tough because the different level of play from the American League is so much more up-tempo. Once you get used to the tempo, it’s a game,” MacDonald told the Associated Press.“You’ve got to come up with the key saves. All the good goaltenders in the National Hockey league, Luongo and all of those guys, they come up with the key save and that’s why they’re superstars. That’s my job, and that’s why I’ve got to give the team a chance to win.”

“My mind’s such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling”

That’s what is going on in the heads of these two youngsters. They want to do everything, all for that beautiful feeling that comes from seeing the red light above the glass behind the goal go off when they hit twine. However, “Over and Over” this season they’ve failed to capitalize on great scoring opportunities.

Even though Okposo has been better than Tambellini, I’d like to see him play with more of an edge and skate up the middle more. Jon Sim, while having an excellent wrist shot, isn’t the offensive player KO is, but he’s produced more this season because there isn’t the same kind of tentative play on his part. When he doesn’t get a shot off, he keeps his legs going and draws penalties. Andy Hilbert and Richard Park do the same thing. The only problem is these guys aren’t finishers and Okposo is supposed to be. In order for him to break out of this mini funk he’s in, he’s got to concentrate more on moving north and south and less east and west. With his speed and skating ability, he’ll draw penalties left and right. Then it’s less about him being timid and more about him being able to finish.

Tambellini is a very similar situation. Like I said yesterday, even though he’s taking the body more than he has before, he’s got to score. At this point, I would totally take a deflection or garbage goal from him. As far as I’m concerned, it’s make or break time for this kid. Enough with the excuse and pot a few already. Over the past three seasons, this kid has been given so many excuses as to why he didn’t produce and even though most of them are well warranted, it’s put up or shut up time.

At this point in the season, both KO and Tamby should have three points and three assists apiece. I feel like a broken record here, but for this team to stay in the win column, guys like Okposo and Tambellini have to step it up.

I can’t think of a better place to start than the lowly Atlanta Thrashers.

While he’s a far cry from Paul Coffey, Sutton will be able to give the Isles the toughness they desperately need right now. Aside from Trent Hunter, Nate Thompson, Freddy Meyer and Sean Bergenheim, Doug Weight has been the Islanders biggest physical presence. If you don’t believe me, just ask Brandon Sutter. At any rate, with the way this offense has performed this season, they need as much help on defense as possible.

Much like last season, if the Islanders can get Brendan Witt, Radek Martinek and Freddy Meyer back, the Islanders defense will be solid and the team won’t have to be forced to play catch up every night. Again, Sutton by himself isn’t going to change everything, but he can be a competent player than can give the team one less thing to worry about. Aside from giving the team an edge on defense, he’ll be able to play the point on the powerplay too if he absolutely has to, providing the team with another option for the second unit. Before his injury last season, Sutton started to come around and after a rocky start, became a leader on the team. If he can provide that same type of energy and clear the crease, he’ll be a pleasant addition to the lineup.

Nothing against Jack Hillen, but it looks like he’s not quite ready yet to be a regular. A sloppy pass here, a failed shot from the point there, combined with Chris Campoli’s return made Hillen a bit replaceable. Given that he has barely any experience in pro hockey in the first place, some time in Bridgeport could benefit his game immensely. His smarts and skating ability could provide him with an ample start there and by later in the season, he may be ready to give the NHL another whirl. That will only be the case though if this defensive core can stay healthy. Otherwise, guys like Hillen and Brett Skinner will be forced into action and as we’ve seen already this season, they are far from being dependable NHL defenders. That’s not to say that they won’t be at some point, but as of right now, they need to earn a few more bumps and bruises.

I personally feel like DP has never been healthy this season and has tried to play through whatever has been ailing him. Either that or his conditioning is so poor that he ended up getting injured again. At any rate, at least the drama is over Yann Danis is in town and the Isles are going to have to step it up on both ends if they are planning to pick up any points against the Rangers today.

With Andy Sutton, Mike Sillinger, Radek Martinek, Brendan Witt and now DP out of the lineup, let me be the first to stop the obscure terms given out by the organization and that the Islanders are suffering from a “heart and soul” injury and the estimated time out of the lineup for “heart and soul” may be the start of the 2009-2010 season. Last season, the Islanders were in the hunt until about the last 20 games, when injuries completely took over. That made one think that if they were healthy and the youngsters stepped it up, this team could still be competitive.

However, with guys like Kyle Okposo and Fran Nielsen looking out of place through their first handful of games as full-time NHlers, the Islanders are sinking faster than a fat man’s face in a gallon of Edy’s ice cream. Simply put, these youngsters have to play their hearts out over the next 70 plus games or else this season is over.

With that being said, the Islanders need players like Doug Weight, Mark Streit, Bill Guerin and Trent Hunter to continue to play well and produce. These guys are the ones that have to set an example for the youngsters like Okposo, Neilsen and Jeff Tambellini, who for the most part, have looked lost this season.

Games against the Rangers are always a good way to rile up the team, so here’s to hoping tonight does the same thing. I don’t know about you, but a two-goal game from a youngster and a few powerplay tallies would be a good sign of things to come if you ask me.

For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think Comrie will ever be a point a game player in the NHL. Right now, he would be an excellent third line center on a great team or a solid second line center on a very good team. Only on a fridge or rebuilding team like the Islanders could he get a shot at being a number one center. That shot didn’t exactly go as planned for him last season either, as his lack of polish on defense and overuse of simple deke moves [like the toe drag, cough] hurt him down the stretch and turned what could have been a career year into another decent one.

Last season, around the All Star break, Comrie was pretty close to a point a game and once he had to be counted on more to provide offense when injuries enveloped the team, his game suffered incredibly. Being even more judgmental here, if you take away the first week of the season from him last year, where he lit up the Buffalo Sabres and it’s totally possible that he could have had his worst offensive season since his rookie campaign.

This season, it appears that the Islanders head coach Scott Gordon prefers to see Doug Weight play with Bill Guerin and because of that, Comrie has been relegated to playing on a line with Richard Park and Kyle Okposo. While some Islander fans aren’t too excited about this, I feel that once Mike Sillinger comes back, the Islanders lines will be pretty well balanced and Comrie won’t be a victim of playing against the opposition’s best defensive players every night, which will benefit him and his current linemates immensely. He’ll produce the same amount of offense he did last season, but it will be worth even more to the team because he’ll be more of a role player than a primary producer. Trading him now would ruin any chance this team has at having a decent offensive attack.

Don’t do it Garth Snow.

That is unless you’re willing to play Josh Bailey in more than nine games this season and you can get a first or second round pick for him.

Because if that, I figured I’d break down the play of some of the youngsters in this post and discuss what I think they need to do to be more effective.

Kyle Okposo- In order for KO to be at his best, he has to do two things: shoot and take the body. Similar to Trent Hunter in the fact that he has a great shot and can be a presence physically, but different due to his solid skating ability and above average speed, KO can be a dangerous commodity; he just has to be less picky with his scoring opportunities and skate more. He can’t shy away from contact either. The next time he’s skating towards a puck in the corner, you’ll see that he’ll take the puck, rather then the body. Once that agenda gets fixed and he starts shooting more, I think you’ll see a different player on the ice.

Nate Thompson- Another guy that needs to take body more. His play in his own end has been okay, but he has to be more of a physical presence. He hasn’t been shooting the puck at all either through his first cup of coffee with the Isles, so I don’t even know what else to say

Jeff Tambellini- He needs to stop avoiding contact and use his stick handling ability to find his way in the middle of the ice. Too many times this season has he skated by people along the boards and ended up coughing the puck. In the AHL, Tambellini wasn’t scared of getting hit if it meant an opportunity to score a goal. In the NHL, he seems extremely passive and rather than go through defenses or draw penalties through hard work, he’s trying to make the highlight reel east west pass in front of the net. I got news for you Tambs, it’s not going to happen. Start earning your bumps and bruises and you’ll be a better player for it.

Frans Nielsen- While his passing has been solid, his play on the powerplay has been a bit suspect, as a lack of confidence and an overbearing sense of unfamiliarity with the NHL game seem present. With his speed, Nielsen should be playing with fire, much like a guy like Jason Blake, who draws penalties and uses his speed to give himself room on the ice. Right now however, Nielsen seems too preoccupied with making the perfect pass than skating and giving himself the adequate room so he’s able to pass in the first place.

It’s funny how a team could add players like Ryan Malone, Andrej Meszaros, Gary Roberts, Mark Recchi, Radim Vrbata and Matt Carle and still have problems. You see, the Lightning never really had a problem scoring goals, so why they added so much more firepower is a bit alarming if you ask me.

Well did you?

Anyway, while Carle is a solid offensive defenseman, he is no where near as proven a commodity on both ends of the ice as former Tampa Bay defenseman Dan Boyle. The same goes for Meszaros, who the Senators gave away this summer for a bag of pucks and ownership of a small bodega in Brooklyn, known infamously for it’s cockfights. After that, the Lightning have the steady, yet void of flash Lukas Krajicek, former Islander Jamie Heward [who didn't even play a game in the NHL last season] alongside rookie Janne Niskala and stay at home youngster Mike Lundin, all supporting youngster Mike “I look like Ashton Kutcher” Smith and the aging Olaf Kolzig in net.

So what does this diatribe mean for the Islanders exactly?

It means that even without the supporting cast of Mike Sillinger and Chris Campoli helping out on offense and the lack of a true first line, this team can score goals against the Lightning if they work hard enough.

Simply put, if this team gives an effort similar to that of the second game of the season against the Blues, meaning they play solid defense and take advantage of turnovers, this team is going to be in great shape tonight.

However, if they decide to take penalties, Tampa Bay will eat them alive on the powerplay faster than a zombie in Dawn of the Dead [the first one, I love the old, dumb zombies. The new, fast ones scare the crap out of me more than the time Ziggy Palffy made out with Travis Green after a goal]. Remember, this team still has Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis and with guys like Jussi Jokinen and first rounder Steve Stamkos, this team has the potential to outscore anyone in the NHL. However, if the Islanders can play tight defense and take advantage of Tampa Bay’s ineffective and inexperienced blue line, they’ll have a very good chance at coming out of Dodge with two points.

On another note, it seems like Isles goaltender Rick DiPietro will get the start on Saturday after Rotowire quoted Islanders head coach Scott Gordon yesterday saying “It will all depend on how Wednesday, Thursday and Friday go…We’re not going to force him. If we think he needs more time, we’ll talk about it and do what’s best.”

So with that being said, it looks like Joey McDonald will get at least one more start. If he can learn to hug the post and the team can play solid defense in front of him, the Isles should be able to at least hold their own until DP is ready to go. Whenever that will be…

Lastly, according to the AP, Radek Martinek will be out four to six weeks with an “Upper Body Injury” [got to love the new rules on reporting injuries to the media, eh? Makes you feel like the NHL has Ted Baxter and Mary Tyler Moore reporting to the masses ]. As well, Blake Comeau will spend the foreseeable future in Bridgeport. Makes you wonder if the Islanders are serious about a youth movement. Or maybe Andy Hilbert or Nate Thompson have pictures of the coaching staff in precarious predicaments during Mardi Gras.

Like I’ve said a few times already this season, the Islanders need to be able to roll four lines and have solid defense in order to sneak into the playoffs. Already missing key players, the first 20 games this season are going to be tough, but once they get who they need back, they should be able to hold their own.

As a matter of fact, if those players get hot, this team may surprise more than a few people.

A lot of people that cover the NHL and fans have short memories when it comes to the Islanders; so short that it’s kind of nauseating at times. Last season, before injuries took their toll, this team was in the middle of the playoff race. This season, they have a few other things going on, as guys like Kyle Okposo, Jeff Tambellini and Frans Neilsen have to be able to contribute on both ends of the ice, but in the end, the story is very similar.

Missing Mike Sillinger, Andy Sutton and Chris Campoli, the Islanders are missing a great faceoff man that can contribute on both ends of the ice, a shutdown d-man that will stick up for his teammates and Chris Campoli, a kid that I believe can be a guy that can provide a physical edge and score 40 points a season. Add these players into the mix and I feel that this is a very different team. Nevertheless, there is one more player that can take this team and take them from zeros to a playoff contender.

Rick DiPietro.

I don’t think that anyone that roots for another team in this league truly understands how much DP means to the team. Without him in the lineup, it’s nearly impossible to see this team make the playoffs. Despite my comments about his attitude and his consistency over the years, saying that he was anything less than the franchise’s biggest asset would be a gross understatement.

So before you guys go out and pack up your bags, wait for the sheriff to come back and clean up this town.

So what exactly does Comrie have to do to get back on track?

1-Make decisions with the puck

Just like a bad driver, Comrie is at his worst when he isn’t aggressive. When he’s forced to hold on to the puck and do something with it, he often reverts to his toe-drag [I'll get to that some more later] to get around and often gets stripped of the puck. If that doesn’t happen, Comrie was resort to dumping the puck into the zone and often times that will be the end of the play. He doesn’t have the smarts of a guy like Mike Sillinger or the play-making ability of Doug Weight, but he does have good speed. If he uses his legs, he’ll get more scoring opportunities and will draw penalties.

2- Don’t get lazy

When Comrie isn’t on his game, he gets so lazy with the puck that he won’t hesitate for second to bring a guy down with a hook. The same thing goes for him on offense, as cross-ice passes aren’t out of the ordinary. Much like Rick DiPietro, when Comrie is on, he can be a dominant player. When he’s off however, he can really his team. In order to counteract this, Comrie needs to keep his legs moving and fully embrace Scott Gordon’s overspeed system. If he does, it could transform him into a different player.

3- No more toe drags!

I’ve said it a thousand times on this site and I’ll continue to say it until Comrie tries to become a more eclectic player. The toe drag works in moderation. Not every single game. Notice that after the first few weeks of the season last year, Comrie didn’t score with the move again until a late season game with the San Jose Sharks and again against the Sabres, the same team he used it against the first week of the season.

If he wants to be a player this team can depend on, he’ll have to devote himself to asking for more out of his game. Being more aggressive, using his speed and using other moves besides the toe drag can get him there.

“No way,” I thought to myself. No way could this team possibly be thinking about bringing back a player that never did what everyone expected him to do. No way would this team pay a man to play for them that they are already paying NOT to play for them.

It’s the kind of logic that could kill a Vulcan.

While Alexei Yashin is probably still a sure-fire 60 point a year player in the NHL if he’s healthy, he is the complete opposite of what this team needs now. Rather than AGAIN try and find a band aid for the gaping wound on the heart and soul of this team, the Islanders need to develop the youngsters they have and let a scab form over their identity, before it heals completely.

I don’t know how the rest of Islanders country feels about this, but I feel like the team still hasn’t healed from the Yashin’s time on the Island. Sure the team made the playoffs a couple of years when he was here, but he was never the player the Islanders needed him to be. Never once did he break 90 points or be the bona fide offensive dynamo they needed. Instead, when he first got here, guys like Mark Parrish, Mike Peca and Shawn Bates developed into solid players and Adrian Aucoin became a Norris Trophy candidate. Those players were the real reason this team managed to change the hockey motif on the Island, not Yashin.

After the lockout, Miroslav Satan was brought in to finally silence the critics that said 79 needed a legitimate scorer to play with. That didn’t work either and while Satan scored a solid 35 goals, Yashin still wasn’t what the team needed. A year with Ted Nolan seemed to change Yashin at first, but injuries and a late season slump sealed his fate with the team.

Even though the Isles offense was anemic this season, bringing in Yashin will do much more harm than good. Notice that I’m not even talking about the fact that the Islanders are paying Mike Comrie four million bucks to play center next season. I mean seriously, how much could Yashin want? It has to be more than what Comrie’s making, especially given the fact that he finally learned to play in playoffs in Russia this offseason. Given that, it doesn’t make sense financially for this team to take a chance on him. With the cap space this team has and the amount of youth present, they could bring in the right people and build what could be a legitimate cup contender, given they have the patience and common sense need to do so.

Please say you do. Please.

However, his second season with the blue and orange was a middling one, void of the offense prowess he had shown a season before. In Ted Nolan’s dog house most of the season, Campoli had to fight to get his job back and in the process, showed that he had the skills to be much more than a “good” offensive defenseman. On numerous occasions that year, it seemed he was, again, just a short stride away from being the kind of defenseman this team really needed him to be.

This season, Campoli was well on his way to being both a more than respectable physical presence and a powerplay quarterback for the Islanders. Rumor has it though his shoulder problems were much worse than the team led on during the season and that it had popped out of place on numerous occasions during the season. I don’t know when it happened, but after about his 30th game, I saw a huge drop off in his play. He wasn’t chipping the puck into the zone as much and wasn’t as eager to play physically. Those to me are the signs of an injured player. Nevertheless, 18 points in 46 games put him on pace for about 32, which would have been more than any other Islanders defenseman this season. Now, again, don’t forget he was probably playing injured through most of the year. To me, that means that if this kid can stay healthy, he can and will be the well-rounded defenseman this team is in desperate need of.

Nothing against Brendan Witt, Andy Sutton, Radek Martinek and Freddy Meyer, but none of them have the skating ability [maybe Martinek did a few seasons ago] Campoli has and none of them have the offensive upside. One may make the argument that Bruno Gervais is a better skater, but he has yet to translate solid offensive numbers in the AHL and QMJHL to the NHL. Campoli on the other hand has and with more confidence from the coaching staff, could be someone to help turn this team around next season.

Isles resign Jackman- For all intensive purposes, Tim Jackman isn’t someone who means much to the success of this team. However, he worked hard when he was up here and was willing to drop the gloves whenever he had to. I still think he has a lot more offensive potential than people give him credit for and think he could pot 10 goals a season if he got significant playing time. At 26 years old, he’s still young enough to give a two-way contract and provide depth at the NHL level, but old enough to set a good example for some of the babies in Bridgeport. Overall, I think it was a good signing. The guy played like he wanted to stay here and never looked out of place while he was on the ice. Add in the fact that he had 36 points in 44 games in Bridgeport and this was practically a no-brainer.

Milbury calls Tiger Woods what? Tiger Woods should have thought twice before he said no one watches hockey anymore. That’s all I’m going to say about that. Well no, I’m going to say much more than that actually. For a golfer to say no one watches hockey is like the owner of TAB saying that Mr. Pibb sucks. Let’s be honest here, we’re not talking about Baseball and the NFL, we’re talking about two cult sports that have loyal fan bases. Watching golf is the essentially like a being a Trekkie/Trekker, while watching hockey puts you more in the Dungeons & Dragons realm of consciousness. Either way, you’re looked down upon by most other sports fans. I personally grew up enjoying both sports and do enjoy hitting off the tee from time to time, but overall, hockey is a much-more rewarding sport to play and watch in my opinion.

As well, the ideals presented in golf are those of the purely individualistic kind. There are no playoff beards or five minute fighting penalties in golf. It’s because of that Woods’ ignorant comments don’t surprise me. Because in actuality, golfers live in a world where the only thing that matters is themselves. Hockey players however, as I have said numerous times on this site, are the greatest athletes in the world and are the friendliest to the media that I have ever encountered. They stick up for each other and care about the general welfare of the sport. That’s why “Mad Mike” said what he did. And for the record, there aren’t many times when I’d stick up for the guy, but in this case, he nailed it right on the head.

Tiger Woods is a Meathead.

“There wasn’t much confidence from our coaching staff to play him,” Snow told Newsday of Dubielewicz. “That’s where we ran into trouble playing Ricky too many nights. We need a backup goalie our coaches will have confidence in from Day 1.”

There aren’t many times when I say something like this, so let me watch how I mix my words.

Are you crazy Mr. Snow?

The reason why DP played in so many games last year was because HE wanted to. Anyone remember the game two seasons ago in Phoenix where he was playing so badly that Ted Nolan wanted to pull him? Anyone remember what happened after that? DP waved him off. He knows this is his team and if he could, he would play in 82 games a season. That’s just how DP rolls. He wants to be the next Martin Brodeur. That is why Dubielewicz played twice in the first 33 games, not because Dubie came into training camp in poor shape [another thing brought up in Logan’s piece] or because the coaching staff had no confidence in him.

If you look at Dubie’s career stats for the Isles [16-13, 2.55 GAA and a .920 Save Percentage], there’s no reason why he still shouldn’t be the backup goaltender of this team or any other team in the NHL. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you could make the argument that Dubielewicz almost single-handedly took this team to the playoffs last year [when his buddy Mike Dunham was stinking up the joint] and kept them in the hunt this year when the defense was as thin as paper and no one was scoring.

To say that the team had no confidence in him is an absolute joke and a tribute to the nonsense players had to put up with when Mike Milbury was GM of this team.

If DP gets injured again next season and Joe MacDonald can’t fill Dubie’s shoes, expect to hear “I told you so,” a lot from yours truly next season.

Aside from that, Logan also got Snow to speak a little bit more about the youth movement. He also spoke about how he believes Miroslav Satan, Ruslan Fedotenko and Josef Vasicek most likely won’t be receiving qualifying offers and how youngsters Sean Bergenheim, Bruno Gervais, Jeff Tambellini, Frans Nielsen and Jeremy Colliton will. While I won’t be having fun playing with rookies on NHL 08 on my Xbox 360 this summer, I’ll be more than happy to see them play this fall and see them play with more passion and dedication than a bunch of second-tier players looking for a big check.

I also don’t expect the team to really go out and pick up too many veterans because of this, from the words of Snow, I think it’s a definite.

“I don’t want to be in a situation where I compromise the ice time of some of our younger players who we’re committed to giving the opportunity to make the team,” Snow told Newsday. “If we start loading up with too many bodies, then that squeezes out some of our young guys. I don’t want to do that.”

It didn’t help matters either that Radek Martinek wasn’t as promising an offensive threat as the team gave him credit for over the past few years, but inconsistency from the top unit and players like Miroslav Satan, Trent Hunter and Marc-Andre Bergeron, as well as injuries to players such as Chris Campoli and Mike Sillinger killed any chance the powerplay had at being successful. For most of the last half of the season, it seemed that teams could get away with committing penalties against the Isles because their powerplay was flaccid at best.

After a while, it seemed that players that should have been getting chances with the man advantage, guys like Sean Bergenheim and Blake Comeau, where getting stiffed in favor of players like Andy Hilbert and Richard Park. Nothing against Park and Hilbert [especially Park, who had his best season in the NHL this year], but guys like Bergenheim and Comeau are the future of this team and need to get as much of an opportunity as possible. While Park and Hilbert work hard on every shift, they aren’t going to develop with experience like the youngsters can. Next season, I expect to see those two players on the PP much more than before and imagine that other youngsters like Kyle Okposo and Jeff Tambellini will get a chance as well.

However, that doesn’t solve the problem of not having a powerplay quarterback. Bergeron was so bad defensively that he became a liability on the powerplay and even though Andy Sutton was used at times, he’s not the answer. Using Satan didn’t work at the point and Bryan Berard was never given a real shot to anchor a unit. With that being said, the Islanders will either be searching for a legitimate offensive defenseman or will ask youngsters like Campoli, Jack Hillen and Bruno Gervais [if he’s resigned] to produce. The Isles will also have an opportunity to draft a defenseman this year, which could potentially solve the problem.

Regardless of this though, players like Guerin and Comrie will have to establish themselves with the man advantage and set an example for the rest of the team to follow. If that doesn’t work, youngsters like Okposo, Comeau and Tambellini will be forced to progress much faster than expected.

Sure, he doesn’t score goals and isn’t the best player on the team on paper, but as far as representing what this team is all about, Witt is the undisputed champion of grittiness. If blocking shots, pissing off the opposition and taking the body could make someone a superstar, then Witt would be a bigger star than Sidney Crosby in this league.

When he was in the lineup this season, the Islanders were a different team. They played with more passion, more determination and they rarely lacked focus. You hear all these stories in the news how important a guy like Sean Avery is to the Rangers, but I think Witt may be an even bigger piece to the puzzle for the Islanders. This guy not only draws penalties, he eliminates guys from plays by using his body and rarely takes a bad penalty. If the rest of the team played with as much resolve, they’d be in the Stanley Cup finals right now.

Not an amazing skater, Witt is fueled by pure will and never gives up on a play. Anyone who has seen Witt play against the likes of Evgeni Malkin over the past two years could totally attest to that. He just seems to own the guy. He’s hit the guy so much since he came to the NHL that you could make a highlight film on it if you really wanted to. However, Malkin isn’t the only player in the league that don’t like to play the Islanders because of him. Simply put, Witt is the Islanders cavalry. He’s their first and last line of defense against the best players in the league. Again, without him, you’d have a much different team out there.

Combined with Radek Martinek, the Islanders have one of the best defensive tandems in the league. Without them, this team would have been lucky to win 30 games. However, considering their lack of offensive luster, they’ll never be regarded as a top-tier pair. For that reason, I really believe the Islanders would consider giving guys like Chris Campoli, Bruno Gervais and Jack Hillen more playing time, so they can develop into the defense of the future.

Nevertheless, a guy like Witt should and will get the majority of the playing time against the best players in the league. He’s too damn good defensively to be played anywhere else and considering how much younger the Isles will be next year, they really can’t afford to not play him in crunch time situations. That means that if he’s healthy, Witt should be making funny faces at refs and getting sucker punched all season.

If you don’t know by now, now you know. That’s great news for the Islanders.

It’s sad that the Islanders had to spend nearly three million dollars this season to find that out. Unlike Josef Vasicek, who the Islanders didn’t spend much money on [and who had a much better season than “Tank”], Fedotenko got first star treatment with the Islanders. He was at the pres conference where guys like Bill Guerin and Mike Comrie promised a rejuvenated team that was sick of being mediocre. However, after the first dozen games or so of the season, Fedotenko virtually disappeared.

Over his first 14 games with the team, he had five goals and 11 points. That basically put him on pace for a career year, netting a solid 25-30 goals and adding close to 35 assists. If that would have been the case I would have been extremely pleased. However, the total opposite happened.

Over the next 36 games he played in, he only had three goals and 13 points. Talk about invisible. I know he was playing injured for some of that time, but still, this guy was brought in to score goals and that simply wasn’t happening. After he came back from a few games missed due to injury, he did get better, but again, at that point, the Isles were already finished and it was too little, too late.

Sure, Fedotenko netted seven goals and nine points over his last 17 games of the season, but that’s what happens when you realize you only have a one-year contract and you want to play another year in the NHL. With that sense of desperation, Fedotenko was a more than serviceable player. However, getting him to play at that kind of level is nearly impossible for a coach. He has to be the one to motivate himself and get going at more of a consistent basis. He has the nose for the puck and hands where he could be a consistent 20-goal scorer in this league.

It remains to be seen if that will ever happen though.

Or did it?

This guy has me so confused. There were so many times when I thought he was going to break out and be the leader on the ice that the team needed. However, for a variety of reasons, that just never happened. It’s not all his fault though. I think some of it has to do with the inconsistency of Ruslan Fedotenko and Mike Comrie. If he was playing with players who were a little more consistent, I think he would have had a better season.

Despite that though, it’s kind of hard to argue against 227 shots and only 23 goals. The season before when he lit the lamp 36 times, he only had 225 shots. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that either he was off his game or he was peppering the net with shots to make up for not getting where he could have been if he had better linemates. Because of this, for the life of me, I don’t know what to make out of him.

However, if the Islanders continue the youth movement as planned, I expect a guy like Guerin to have another 20-25 goal season next year. He’s not a guy that takes over games and needs to be surrounded by players that give him space in order to be truly effective. Nothing against Comrie or Kyle Okposo, but they’re not those guys. And in the case of Okposo, he’s not that player, yet. All Guerin can do in this situation is pad his career stats and be the leader these young kids need him to be. If he can do that, then I could forgive him for scoring 25 goals a season at 35 goals a year money.

But if the Islanders go out and decide to get a number one center, rather than develop one, I think that Guerin will probably benefit the most. I still think that he’s a more than capable winger who can score 30 goals a season, but like I said, he needs to have the right pieces around him.

At this point of the offseason though, it remains to be seen who that could be, prompting me to think that he’ll be.

This year’s team was all about taking chances on guys. Mike Comrie was given an opportunity to be a number one center and Vasicek was given more ice time than ever before in an effort to see where he really stands. Now we know. Aside from being a very good penalty killer, Vasicek can pot a few here and there, especially when he gets in front of the net, but when he’s not skating, he’s barely noticeable on the ice, which in effect limits the space his teammates have on the ice and plays a huge part in making his linemates less effective.

On a good team, Vasicek is a fourth liner, whose offensive upside and good penalty killing ability would be a great depth booster. If he played 12 minutes a game all season and ended up with 35 points, I don’t think any logical hockey fan would be too disappointed. However, like I said, there came a point, especially after Mike Sillinger’s injury, where all of these guys who were playing well in their roles, players like Comrie, Fedotenko and Vasicek, were exposed and were put in a situation to step up. They didn’t and that’s one the reasons why this team ended up not making the playoffs.

Now, I know Garth Snow has stated on the record that he’s sick of being average, so if Vasicek is resigned for next season, I don’t expect him to have the same type of role. If the Isles were smart about this, they’d throw him on the fourth line with someone like Richard Park and Blake Comeau, which in my mind would not only force Vasicek to skate every night, it would be a fourth line that plenty of teams in the NHL would love to have. Anyway, with the playoffs still going on, the Isles will have to wait a few more weeks until they start to decide what to do with him.

While he wasn’t horrible for the Isles, it’s clear he can’t be what the team needs him to be. With that being said, he may be forced into another role if resigned or let go all together. My guess is on the later.

Nonetheless, when he’s on his game, he is without a doubt, a Vezina trophy candidate. I’m sure some of you pundits are in front of your computers laughing as you read this, but it’s the truth. There’s a reason why the guy made the All-Star team. The Islanders would have been fish in the bottom of the pond through the halfway point of the season if it wasn’t for DP. Remember all those one-goal games? 35 saves here, 40 there? Of course not, because the rest of the NHL seems to consistently believe that the Islanders are the benefactors of luck, while in reality, its character and grit. When I think of goalies that have the power of bringing their team to the next level, Rico is one of the first that come to mind, after of course, Martin Brodeur.

Like I said, when he’s on, that’s exactly what DP represents. Without a doubt, he is everything a hockey fan could ask for in a goaltender and then some. However, when times are bad, they are horrible. Take last season, after the All-Star break, for instance. After injuring his knee [and worse off, not the one he had surgery on the year before] and hiding the fact [I remembering mentioning more than a few times he was playing injured, to only fall on deaf ears: score one for big Pat], the Islanders headed in a downward spiral; in the end, it was one of the reasons why the team didn’t make the playoffs.

Like all things concerning DP though, there are two sides to this debacle. The guy is signed for 13 more years, you can’t take a risk in having him permanently injure himself. Selfishness on the part of DP helped cost Joey McDonald and Wade Dubielewicz at least five starts apiece and got the ship going in the wrong direction. A direction it could never recover from.

On the other side of the coin though, you have a guy that wants to be the leader of this team and wants to be the center of their success. While it doesn’t always work out the way the guy would like, you have to respect the fact that someone is willing to stick their neck out for this team.

That’s something that doesn’t quite show up in the box score after the game and I think we’ll only see more of that in the future from DP. He grew a lot mentally last year on the ice and was much better covering the puck. After the injury, it felt like he was reverting to his old “tryin’ to go too much” façade and it hurt him. Hopefully next season, he comes back healthy and continues to mature more. With a much younger team who may have problems scoring yet again, they’ll need him more than ever.

Late in the season, when all the Sound Tigers were up, Comeau was asked if he would join them after the season was over if they made the playoffs. The answer he provided showed a level of maturity and willingness to compete that you don’t see very often in youngsters, as he said he thought of himself as an NHLer now and that while he would go back if they asked him, he instead wanted to focus on his game and help the team make the most of the season. By the end of the season, I think he really established himself as someone that could help the team in various different areas.

With the youth movement apparent, I see Comeau as a third line winger in the mold of someone like Trent Hunter, scoring 15-20 goals a season and playing in all game situations. Scoring eight goals and 15 points in 51 games might not sound too enthralling, but when add in the fact that Comeau only took 67 shots on goal this season, it’s obvious that with a little more polish and hard work, he could be a dependable role player on this team.

However, I think the biggest thing Comeau needs to work on is his toughness. Sure, he takes the body and plays a physical game, but he doesn’t stick up for himself on the ice as often as he should.

A few times last season, people were taking liberties with him and he didn’t respond. One instance that comes to mind is the whole Garnett Exelby situation, you know, when the Thrashers defenseman went gonad fishing with his stick and then sucker-punched the youngster. I know what Comeau was thinking in this situation, that the Isles were way ahead in the game and he wasn’t going to be enticed to drop the gloves when the team was ahead and fighting for their playoff lives, but when a guy spears you in the marbles and then sucker punches you, you have to stand up for yourself. After Exelby got out of the penalty box, Comeau should have challenged him right then and there. Instead, he didn’t and over the next few weeks, agitators were busting his chops on the ice on a consistent basis.

In order for him to truly take his game to the next level, I really feel that he has to stand up for himself. That will give him more space on the ice and will give more of an opportunity to help himself and this team. Otherwise, he’s going to be a marginal 15 goal scorer with no passion.

The passion and talent is there, we just have to wait to see how it develops.

I personally think that there is so much more to this guy’s game than goals. He kills penalties, takes the body, works hard in corners, blocks shots, plays in all game situations and never gives up. There’s a reason why he’s on the banner of this website. To me, he epitomizes what hockey is all about. However, despite my ardent feelings about his character on the ice and what he CAN do, the fact of the matter is he has to score more goals.

Last season, writers all over the internet were writing him off as an offensive talent after a slow first half, to only watch him come back and score 20 goals. This season, while Hunter’s shooting percentage was a lackluster .054, he did set a career high in assists with 29. To me, that shows that Hunter can change his game and put himself in a position to help his team win. Nonetheless, that doesn’t excuse the fact that he only lit the lamp 12 times. Simply put, anyone who takes over 200 shots in this league is either on a horrible team, is a proven offensive threat or is someone who simply has a nose for the net and consistently puts himself in a place to score. While the Islanders record is almost indicative of the first term prescribed here, I do think that the other two ring true in a certain respect as well.

Recently signing a five-year deal with the Isles, Hunter isn’t the same wide-eyed rookie who scored his first NHL goal against the Maple Leafs in 2002. He’s a veteran who can help lead this team out of the mediocrity they’ve been infested themselves within for the past six seasons and find a way rejuvenate the fan base. They’ve already shown on numerous occasions how much they appreciate his effort on the ice, it’s Hunter’s turn to turn in a 25-30 goal campaign next season and prove to them he can be someone who can be the captain of this team one day.

16 goals, 41 points, $4.5 million. That’s like a half a million bucks a goal right there.

Ok, I’m done with this post. Oh, wait, this site prides itself on being more than just a simple rant. Even though I think whatever I have to say after that first line isn’t going to convey how poorly Miroslav Satan played this season, I think I’ll still give it a whirl.

Coming off of a 35-goal season with the Islanders in 2006, I expected Miroslav Satan to continue to put up similar numbers and be a driving force in the team’s offense. However, over the past two seasons, Satan hasn’t been the same player and has consistently become far less lethal a shooter as he used to be. His play making skills, which were always sharp, but extremely underrated [49 assists in 2002] having been too solid either on the Island, making him perhaps the highest paid fourth liner in Islanders history. That is, next to Alexei Yashin.

At times, it felt like the only reason why he was in the lineup was to score during the shoot out, which was always solid in. However, with his offensive game dipping and players like Andy Hilbert, Richard Park and Sean Bergenheim establishing themselves as solid penalty killers with the team, Satan lost even more value as a player and is basically no longer needed on this team. At any rate, Satan should have easily had 25 goals this season. He played with a streaky Joe Vasicek and an energizer bunny in Sean Bergenheim, who have him a ton of space on the ice. The only problem was Miro couldn’t finish. Because of that the Isles were stuck with him during the trading deadline like a broken toy on Christmas.

If he had any value to this team, the Isles would have either done one of two things this trading deadline. One, is just like Trent Hunter and Freddy Meyer, they would have resigned him. Two, they would traded him to team where they know they could have gotten someone that could fill his shoes. However, none of that happened because Satan had no worth on the market. This offseason, expect the Islanders to either let him walk or offer him either 2/3 of half of what he was making this season. Shocked and pissed off at the Islanders low balling, he’ll go to another team and sign a three-year deal where he’ll score 20 goals a season before retiring.

Make no mistake about it, his days as a top-tier forward are over. If the Isles are smart, they either part ways with him now or pay him third line money. In the end, it’s up to them, but I think the effortless play he exhibited over the last half of the season showed just how much he wants to be a part of this team.

Who am I talking about? Sean Bergenheim.

That was his first half of the season. Over the second half, he blossomed and turned into much more than a spunky winger who could provide much more than an energy boost. He even made the players around him better and finally started to look like a real goal scorer. Scoring seven goals in the 32 games after the All-Star break, Bergenheim scored several big goals for the team and played a much more focused game than he ever did in his other stints with the team. He was also taking the body more and gave the Isles another well-rounded winger to complement guys like Bill Guerin and Trent Hunter.

Despite that though, there are still many that don’t feel he’ll ever be an elite player like the Islanders envision. I, however, definitely see him in the mold of someone like Brendan Morrow. His development will take longer, but in the end, I think the Isles will have someone who can score 25 goals and add 30 helpers a year. When that happens is the tough part though. There are plenty of circumstances that could either boost or hinder his development. It didn’t help him last season that he played with Josef Vasicek and Miroslav Satan, two of the most inconsistent players on the team. However, if he’s moved to another line, one that showcases him, instead of looking good on paper, I think he can be a dangerous player.

If I was making up lines for the Islanders next season, I would throw Bergie on a line with Kyle Okposo and someone steady in both ends of the ice… someone like…Mike Sillinger. Guerin and Comrie have chemistry on one line, maybe they finally give Tambellini a real shot to be a goal scorer with them. Richard Park and Blake Comeau have undeniable chemistry and with someone like Trent Hunter, that would be a great line that would work hard in both ends of the ice. However, I digress. Putting Bergenheim with someone like Okposo, who can skate with him stride for stride and someone who can cover up for him on defense and feed him the puck in the slot like Sillinger will easily turn a 10 goal scorer into someone much more dangerous and dependable.

In the end though, that’s all up to the Islanders. Bergenheim has proven he can play, the Isles just have to give him the room he needs to thrive.

Now imagine doing that if you’re Wade Dubielewicz, who’s generously listed at 5’10 and 180 pounds. Most reporters however will tell you he’s probably about two inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter, hence the reason for his nickname, “Yoda.” Despite his small stature however, Dubielewicz played solid goal all season for the Islanders.

Devastated with injuries to their defense and losing starting goaltender Rick DiPietro for the last quarter of the season, Dubielewicz was forced to step up and was stellar with a patchwork defensive core behind him. Going 9-9-1 with an impressive .917 save percentage and a more than respectable 2.70 GAA, while assuming the role of the team’s starter, Dubielewicz was been one of the few bright spots on what was a sub-par season for the Islanders. While he isn’t happy that the team’s injuries cost them a chance at making the playoffs, he was glad he got another opportunity to prove is more than just a solid backup.

“Without Ricky’s injury, you don’t get that kind of opportunity,” Dubielewicz told Newsday. “You don’t really want it to come in this situation, but a guy my stature and my status, you’ve got to take what you get. I just want to show the brass and the guys on the team that I can play at this level, not only in a backup role, but a more prominent role.”

However, this wasn’t the first time Dubielewicz has proven to be a goaltender any team could depend on. After DiPietro suffered two concussions in less than a month last season, Dubielewicz took over for struggling Islanders backup Mike Dunham, winning the last four games of the season and helped secure the team a playoff spot. While the rest of the NHL still seems to consider Dubielewicz a mystery man of sort, the Islanders coaching staff knows full well how capable he is.

“Dubielewicz is very capable, and that’s why you have two goaltenders…Wade’s a great story within himself,” Islanders head coach Ted Nolan told Newsday. “This guy is a battler, and I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’s a treat to watch compete.”

Despite those sentiments however, the Islanders signed goaltender Joey MacDonald to a two-year contract last season, with the last year being a one-way deal. That means that despite playing some of the best hockey of his career and keeping the team in games for over a month and half of the regular season, Dubielewicz may be out of a job with the Islanders come this offseason.
Dubielewicz isn’t a pessimist though. Rather than hark on what may happen, he decided to simply focus on his game. With the Isles season now over, he’ll have to ponder the chances of staying with the Isles or catching on somewhere else.

That is something he’s rather not see happen though.

“I think my value goes up over time,” Dubielewicz told Newsday. “They can see I’m consistent and that my size isn’t a big factor. If I went to another team, I’d probably have to spend a lot of time knocking down those hurdles again.”

Despite all the sour spots on this team this season, Park was one of the only reasons to watch them every night. He played in every situation and worked hard on every shift, sometimes much more noticeably so than his teammates. If that wasn’t enough, he brought out the best of every player he was on the ice with and helped make Kyle Okposo’s first cup of coffee in the NHL much more adventurous than it could have been otherwise.

When I think of Park, I think of a guy that could win the Unsung Hero award on any team he plays on. Last season, his two goals on the last day of the season got the Islanders in the playoffs and this season I think he really established himself as a leader on this team, However considering the fact that real hockey fans are harder to find than people who play Dungeons & Dragons, the exploits of a guy like Park will continue to go unnoticed. However, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t important to this team. Luckily, the Islanders organization knows that and have him locked up for next season.

Even though he needs to start finishing more, Park looks like he will get serious ice time on the Islanders third line next season, that is unless they go out and sign a player or two or bring back Josef Vasicek. For my money though, regardless of where he is slotted, Park is a guy that has to get 12-14 minutes a game. His energy out there is too positive and he’s got too much grit to be on the bench. If he gets a few lucky bounces next season and stays healthy, Park could score 20 goals. For a team starving for offense, Park could continue to develop into a key role player in this league.

Ted Nolan and Garth Snow have a model they want to build this team around and I think Park is the perfect player for the system they’re trying to create. He can provide some offense, plays solid defense and can block shots. If they had a few more of him, maybe they’d be in the playoffs right now.

Watching the play of rookies Kyle Okposo, Blake Comeau, Jeremy Colliton and Frans Nielsen over the last quarter of the NHL season, one would be hard pressed to say that they weren’t ready for serious ice time. However, with head coach Ted Nolan’s long held ideology of giving playing time to veterans over youngsters, the question remains to be seen just how crucial these players will be to the Islanders next season.

Regardless of what his coach may think about the matter, Islanders owner Charles Wang seems to think that it’s time for the team to look in another direction, with the youngsters being the GPS system to lead them past the wasteland of mediocrity they were in all season.

Winning the fifth pick in this year’s draft as well, the Islanders will be have an opportunity to build through the draft and organization, similar to the turnovers teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks have had over the past five seasons, who, not ironically, find themselves in the playoffs this season, while the Islanders do not.

“If you look at what has happened – and it certainly has changed in the last two months or so – they’ve proven him wrong,” Wang told Newsday. “We all may have a predetermined way of looking at something. But what we should do after the season is look in the mirror and say, ‘What have I learned from this thing?’ I’m sure Teddy will say, ‘Boy, these kids are good. These kids add energy. These kids add a spark.’ He’s said that to me many times, as he’s said it to you and all the players many times. They are the future.”

With veterans Bill Guerin, Mike Sillinger, Trent Hunter, Richard Park, Andy Sutton and Brendan Witt and other developing youngsters like Chris Campoli, Jack Hillen and Sean Bergenheim, the Islanders rookies may have the support and confidence to rise to the next level. Wang has even said that he has no problem going out on the free agent market and landing another free agent to play with them if it’s someone that can really help them.

“Right now, we’re going to build it through the draft and through our young players,” Wang told Newsday. “But I’ve never said no to them if they feel there’s some unrestricted free agent who could make the big difference.”

Getting the opportunity of a lifetime, the youngsters in the organization know that next season will be a pivotal one and they seem ready to take their future and run with it.

“I thought we really started to gel the last few games,” Okposo told Newsday. “It’s something I hope I’ll be part of for quite some time.”

While the signing itself shows that Isles GM Garth Snow is dedicated on bringing young talent to the team, I really like the things Hillen had to say on the team’s official website about joining the team. The Isles may have a tough time bringing in dependable veterans but if the things that Hillen are saying are really true and not just opening-day cliché, then they may have a shot at bringing in more quality youngsters.

A few quotes in particular made me feel that this organization isn’t as bad off as many think right now. It seems that Kyle Okposo is playing a part in all of this as well.

“I played against Kyle when he was at the University Minnesota and I was at CC,” Hillen said on the Isles official website. “We had a two-game series against them earlier in the year. I gave him a call and asked him how he liked it. He had great things to say. He said the coaching staff is great and everyone here is great. I asked him about Bridgeport and some other things and he had nothing but good things to say. That affected my decision because I felt really comfortable with what he had to say.”

And one more…

“I liked the way Garth Snow and Islanders management came after me with honesty and a commitment,” Hillen said this afternoon, soon after signing his contract. “They are building a team around a core of exciting young players. I know Kyle Okposo well from playing against him and he had many glowing things to say about how the organization has treated him. The Islanders were the perfect fit for me.”

To me, this quotes show that Okposo wants to be surrounded by quality players and build something here. Good stuff.

It has single-handedly proven that the New York Islanders cannot continue to grow as a team the way they are. They cannot simply snatch up second-rate free agents and mix them with the grinders they have and make the playoffs. Like the Penguins and Blackhawks before them, the Islanders have to build in the draft and through trades that are geared towards building for the future, rather than the present.

Despite how horribly this team has played down the stretch and regardless of how inexperienced they are right now, this team, which consists of more no name players than the Charlestown Chiefs, is working very hard on the ice. Youngsters like Blake Comeau, Sean Bergenheim, Kyle Okposo, Mathew Spiller and Frans Nielsen are ready to play in this league and are done staying behind the spotlight. Maybe I’m being a tad melodramatic here, but I think with some seasoning, all of these guys can be solid players for this team.

I definitely see Comeau in the Trent Hunter mold and I think Bergenheim and Okposo can be 20-30 goal scorers in this league. Spiller seems able to play a ton of minutes and looks capable of holding down a role similar to Andy Sutton. Nielsen has shown as well that he wants to play and can do all the little things like making smart passes in the neutral zone to winning key face-offs. All they need is time. Next season, if the Isles are smart, they dedicate it to making sure they get that time.

And I know that the organization is contempt on building a winner and they want to make the playoffs every year, but I think the fans would be more receptive to this team saying “We need to develop our youngsters so we can maintain a winner,” rather than another huge signing or something else of that nature. Let the Ruslan Fedotenko’s, Miroslav Satan’s and Josef Vasicek’s go and give the youngsters a chance to become those players.

I really wish that this was an April fool’s joke and this team was sitting in the seventh or eighth spot in conference. But even if they were, would they even be able to make it past the first round? I don’t think so. So what is the joke here? A team that hasn’t won a playoff series since 1993 or a team that won’t admit that it needs to rebuild? You be the judge.

It’s also funny to me that the Islanders wouldn’t allow Okposo to talk after the game. From what I’ve been told [I’ve never covered a game at Nassau, just at MSG] the media only gets to speak to a few players after every game, rather than get the run of the locker room like they do at MSG. Considering that they’re already looked upon as the fourth hockey team in the tri-state area, they should give the reporters all the accommodations they need to cover the team to the best of their ability.

I mean seriously guys, the Islanders have a flashy new rookie up, they should make him available after every single game to the media. This guy needs to be marketed as heavily as possible and needs to be in every single paper. Why the Islanders haven’t done this so far is a little weird to me.

Okay, here we go,

I loved what Miroslav Satan had to say to Newsday a few days ago about all the rookies on the team right now:

“Well, it’s the morning (of a game), and (the lineup is) still a mystery,” Satan told Newsday. “We’re going to find out before the game how the lineup is and who’s playing and who’s not. I just know there’s going to be more changes today from the last game.”

[Insert the world’s smallest violin here]

Awww, poor Miro. Maybe if you’d take a few more shots [he’s looking at his first season with less than 200 since 1997] and then convert on the plethora of golden opportunities you’ve had all season, then maybe this team wouldn’t be as bad off as they are right now. Rather than moan about how bad things are, why not go out there and play with some heart and intestinal fortitude? No, that would be too easy, right?

Lastly for today, it appears Jeff Tambellini is done as an Islander for the season, scoring only one goal and adding four assists in 31 games this season. Despite a nice stretch last season, this kid really hasn’t stood out in my eyes. However, he really hasn’t gotten the ice time needed to really thrive. Nevertheless, it’s kind of hard to argue about how good a guy is when he has four goals and 13 assists in 79 career games. I’m not calling the kid a first round flop yet, as he’s had a great season in the AHL, but next season may be his put up or shut up year as far as his NHL career is concerned.

As on Islanders fan right now, I think that’s all I have left.

Let’s be honest here, Okposo hasn’t been amazing, but he’s been solid and has gotten a little better with every game under his belt. Sure, he needs more seasoning, but what better time to get it than now? This team is finished and Okposo and the other Islanders youngsters can play against teams desperate to either cushion playoff spots or win one. Then after the season is over, they can go back to Bridgeport and finish things up there. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

However, I do think that the Islanders need to evaluate Okposo more in training camp and give him an opportunity to play on the Isles top line next season. Nothing against his linemates now, but you don’t draft a guy with your first selection in a draft to be a banger on the third line. This guy has the moves and the talent to be a near point a game player if he plays with the right people. The Islanders need to make sure they remember that.

The same thing goes for guys like Sean Bergenheim and Blake Comeau as well. As the season has gone on, both Comeau and Bergenheim have developed into solid players as well and guys that I think this team can trust in bigger roles next season. In the beginning of the season, Bergenheim skated around the ice with a madman’s intensity, used buckets of energy on every shift. However, the polish wasn’t there yet and he wasn’t getting the benefits that come with the hard work he was exhibiting on the ice. Once the second half started, this guy woke up it seems and while he only has 10 goals and could easily have twice that much, I’m looking forward to seeing him next season, in better shape on focused on finishing the plays he starts.

When Blake Comeau came to the Isles in December, I don’t think anyone really expected much from him. Nonetheless, the guy has proven this year that he is a capable NHL player and with some more experience under his belt, he can be 15-20 goal scorer that can play in all game situations. I really think that next season Comeau will develop more and start finishing with more potency. He’s also gotten bumped around a lot this year and I think he’s learned to keep his head up more. I see him putting up Trent Hunter-ish numbers next season [15 goals 20 assists] on the Isles third line while killing penalties and playing on an energy line, most likely with Richard Park.

This team isn’t making the playoffs this season and it’s not because of Nolan.

You want to know the reasons why? Here they are:

Miroslav Satan- 15 goals, need I say more?

Don’t even get me started on this guy. If the Islanders bring this guy back, this site will be filled with a few choice rants. I promise. It’s not that the Islanders haven’t given this guy an opportunity to score either; he’s played with good players or even players that were streaking. He’s been on the powerplay and has had plenty of opportunities. He should have 30 goals right now, no excuses. He quit on this team.

Bill Guerin- 22 goals and 40 points

This is a guy that has been a perennial 30 goal scorer and a lock for at least 55 points. Among the list of the Islanders’ under-achievers, he’s one of the biggest.

Mike Comrie- 21 goals and 28 assists

After signing a one-year extension a few weeks ago, Mr. Duff has been absolutely invisible. Some people expected a point a game season from him, but I was expecting at least 60. He’s done it before in smaller roles and hasn’t been able to do it here. Maybe Guerin’s and Ruslan Fedotenko’s ineffectiveness has plagued him, but still hasn’t been able to finish. Also, if I see another toe drag from him, I may go clinically crazy.

Ruslan Fedotenko- 16 goals, 33 points

Another guy that was brought in and overpaid, Tank showed flashed of brilliance, but injuries and a lack of finish hampered his season. Just like Comrie, Fedotenko was expected to flourish with more ice-time. That hasn’t happened.

If having four players like this on your team, the Islanders have had even bigger problems this year.

First off, they don’t have a real number one defense pairing. Nothing against Radek Martinek or Brendan Witt, because they bust their humps every night, but they’re not exactly 2003 versions of Kenny Jonsson and Adrian Aucoin. They can’t play in all game situations and can’t take this team on their backs and run with it. Aucoin and Jonsson could playa half hour a night in all situations. Sure their numbers weren’t fantastic, but they played solid defense and contributed on offense. While Marty and Witter play great D, the Isles need something more out of their first defensive pairing.

Aside from all of this, Rick Dipietro, Mike Sillinger, Andy Sutton, Bruno Gervais and Chris Campoli have all missed serious amounts of time with injuries. These are all things that Nolan cannot control. Considering all of this, they’re lucky they’ve been competitive this long.

This offseason, the Isles will have plenty of decisions to make about this team. Keeping Ted Nolan around after his contract runs out should be an easy one.

Here’s Garth Snow’s take on the situation:

“Rick wanted badly to be with his team until the end of the season, but this decision was made with his best long-term interests in mind,” Islanders general manager Garth Snow said in a statement. “Rick took his game to even greater heights this season, deservedly being named a National Hockey League All-Star for the first time in his career.

“He gave everything he had to the Islanders and our fans this season and was a warrior all the way through. By having the surgery immediately, Rick will have plenty of time to be at 100 percent long before the start of Islanders training camp in September.”

Yeah, he was a warrior. He was also selfish. If the injury was so bad that it required surgery, he should have done what was best for the team and get something done about it ASAP. Instead, he played like garbage down the stretch, helping the team break down and fall out of playoff contention. There was a stretch of games where Dubie was playing great hockey as well and Ted Nolan decided to go back with DP, who was probably complaining about not getting ice-time, even though he was hurt.
I said it a thousand times last year when Mike Dunham was the backup for most of the season and I’ll say it again. In order to win in this league, you need two capable goalies.

Guys like Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo, Evgeni Nabokov and a few others are freaks of nature and its crazy how they haven’t gotten seriously injured yet. In a perfect world, DP gets 55-60 starts a season for my team. The rest go to Dubie. The teams that the Isles should be able to beat that perennially miss the playoffs and Western Conference teams I’d give Dubie the start against. All the teams that the Isles have to bite and scratch against for a playoff spot, then DP gets the nod. However, if one of them is playing strong hockey, that could all go out the window.

As of right now, I’d focus the rest of this season on getting Dubielewicz and his awesome new mask as much ice time as possible. Nothing against Joey MacDonald, but he can just sit back and relax.

Well, it seems I got my wish. Kyle Okposo will be joining the Isles for the last nine games of the season.

“Insert breath of fresh air here.”

Like I’ve said numerous times over the past week and a half, this has been the one thing I’ve been waiting for since the Isles decline. Losing Jon Sim after two games, losing Chris Campoli, Mike Sillinger and Andy Sutton, the Simon suspension, the relative ineffectiveness of Miroslav Satan and Mike Comrie’s insistence to use the toe-drag every game more times than Eric Cartman calls Kyle Brovlovski a Jew in an episode of “South Park” have made this season a bumpy one. Nonetheless, a strong nine games from KO and some of the other youngsters can put me and some of the other restless fans in a good mood come offseason.

Some people feel that this team is just a good defenseman and another scorer away from making the playoffs next season, but they have a lot more work than that to do. Next season should be used just to get guys like Jeff Tambellini, Blake Comeau, Frans Nielsen and KO the opportunity to crack the lineup and get their bumps and bruises they need. For too long has this team tried to tweak and just be good enough to make the playoffs, rather than totally rebuild. Now that decision it seems is an inevitable one.

Getting KO some playing time and I mean real playing time 10-15 minutes a game, in all situations and really assessing what he’s capable of will not only be fun for the fans, but will also help the Isles see where they are at as a franchise. From watching him in Bridgeport a few times, I think he has that killer instinct needed to be successful at the NHL level. He can pass the puck when he doesn’t have a shot and even though he’s classified as a power forward, he’s equally as fast and can draw penalties with his tenacity and grit.

The Isles have also decided to play Okposo with Richard Park, which may benefit both of them more than anyone else thinks. Park has had a solid campaign again this season, but hasn’t been the same offensive player he was earlier in the year. With all the chances he’s had this season, he could easily have twice as many goals as he has now. Nevertheless, the guy is a workhorse on the ice and has a habit of making the players he plays with follow suit. Having Okposo on the ice with Park is a great move by the organization and should make his first cup of NHL coffee an interesting one.

Eight points behind the last playoff spot with ten games to go, the Islanders had seven Bridgeport Sound Tigers in their lineup for their last game and will probably feature something similar tonight against the Montreal Canadiens. Not good. When injuries decimate your team like this, you really need a miracle to get things done and find a way to win.

Great teams with great leaders find those ways to win, but I don’t think the Isles have that one guy that can say “Let’s do this guys; Let’s win every game we have left and shove the last playoff spot up everyone’s ass!” [That marks the first time I’ve ever used that word on this site. What word? Do I really have to say it again? I’m trying to be somewhat professional here!] Instead they have a bunch of grinders that would make great supporting characters on a great team.

Bill Guerin isn’t Brad Pitt, he’s more like Vince Vaughn, great in small doses, but intolerable as a star. The same thing can be said for Mike Comrie, who plays with the finesse and flair of Patrick Stewart, but ends up looking more like George Takai. And that’s no offense to these guys, they’ve played hard for this team, they just haven’t gotten the results they should have.

For all the chances both of them have had, Comrie and Guerin should have 30 goals each and Comrie should have about 15 more points [especially considering that guys like Guerin and Richard Park have hit more goal posts than Andy Hilbert does in his worst nightmares]. But I’ve done enough bitching about these guys this season. It’s old, it’s boring, and it’s almost to the point of being cliché now.

So what can we do as Islander fans now to make sure they don’t go crazy? Focus on watching the youngsters. Watch Steve Regier, Jeff Tambellini, Ben Walter, Blake Comeau and Matt Spiller tonight. Watch them take to the ice and show this team what they have. Walter scored a nifty little deflection goal the other night off a howlitzer of a shot by Comeau, that was the other thing that made me smile a little bit during that Tampa Bay game. Hopefully these kids turn themselves into players that can star for this team for years to come, so they don’t have to rely on trying to revive someone else’s career here.

It’s time to start writing a new script people and the Islanders are sending out an open casting call.

With this season basically done for the Islanders, I figured I’d take the time to talk about an Islander that hasn’t gotten a ton of credit this season, but has nonetheless played solid when called upon.

Bryan Berard.

19 points in 44 games may not sound like much, but in a little over a half season, Berard is the leading scorer amongst Islanders defensemen. Over that time, his skating has gotten better and his physical game has improved. Is he the same player that played solid defense for the Rangers a few years back or the same offensive wunderkind the Isles had a decade ago? No. But he has done enough o make the most out of a horrible situation and I think should be brought back next season as the team’s seventh defenseman. With Radek Martinek, Freddy Meyer, Brendan Witt, Bruno Gervais, Andy Sutton and Chris Campoli all coming back next season however, the chances of that happening are very slim. Nonetheless, Berard’s play has been far from terrible overall and if he does leave the Island he should be able to catch on somewhere else.

The reason why I think the Isles should keep him around is because he’s a talented offensive player and in the new NHL, you need depth and options. Aside from Chris Campoli, who else could possibly man the powerplay effectively? I know Rob Davison was brought in this season to provide more toughness and could get a long look at camp next season for the seventh d-man spot, but I think the Isles already have the toughness angle on defense covered. Unless Andrew MacDonald or another young defenseman is ready to make the jump, Berard’s presence will be needed with the man advantage.

While there are many problems with this team right now, I don’t think Berard is one of them. I also think that he’s done enough this season to prove that he can still be an effective NHL defenseman. For the Isles to get as many points out of him, throwing him into the lineup every other game or so, they’re lucky he’s scored as much as he has. Imagine [I hate using this word] how many points he could have had if the Isles would have given up on Marc-Andre CoughUpthePuckeron earlier in the season?

Another reason why I think the Isles should keep him is because they could sign him rather inexpensively. If he’s rather and gets playing time, he could still score 35-40 points. That’s not Sergei Gonchar, but its good enough. With a decent enough powerplay quarterback, the Isles could focus on other matters this offseason and surround the youngsters on this team with better veteran talent.

1- Get more traffic in front of the net.

There’s a reason why the Islanders have only two 20-goal scorers on their team this season. Players like Trent Hunter, Josef Vasicek, Blake Comeau, Ruslan Fedotenko and even Bill Guerin need to get in front of the net more and score, ugly, garbage goals that will only come from getting in front of the goalie. With those guys in front of the net, shots by Bryan Berard and Freddy Meyer from the point will be much more effective as well. With a few more players in front of the net, players like Jeff Tambellini, Miroslav Satan and Mike Comrie will have more room to skate and create as well.

2- Convert on the powerplay.

Utilizing the big bodies they have and putting them in front of the net, the Isles should be able to convert more with the man advantage. However, they have to get more shots on net as well. Despite pounding the net with shots at times this season, the Isles offense has still remained flaccid. However, most of the time, it feels like they’re not taking high percentage shots and they’re not shooting with screens in front of the goalie. Sean Bergenheim’s goal against the Rangers was a perfect example of how the Isles need to pick their shots. Even though it wasn’t on the powerplay, it was still a goal the Isles need to emulate more. Satan got the puck to Bergenheim on the rush and got in front of Lundqvist, allowing Bergie to get off a good shot. That’s exactly what this team has to do on a consistent basis to start winning games.

3- Play with more passion.

Aside from guys like Hunter, Bergenheim, Richard Park and Andy Hilbert, how many guys do the Islanders have that skate hard every shift? On Saturday, it seemed like after the third goal, this team just gave up. If the aforementioned players were the stars of the team, that wouldn’t be a problem. To make matters worse, the Isles three most talented goal scorers, Guerin, Comrie and Satan are all extremely streaky and can go from playing great to mediocre in the blink of an eye. If this team is going to have any chance at making the playoffs, all three of them are going to have to play at a point a game clip the rest of the season.

4- Get solid goaltending.

Rick DiPietro has to prove why he was an All-Star this season all over again. If this team can’t get any scoring, he’s going to have to be perfect for this team to make the playoffs. Considering how solid he was through the first half of the season, some might even say that the Isles were overachievers. If DP is solid the rest off the way and can run the table, they can continue to piss off hockey analysts all over the country. Anyone that understands the attitude of DP knows that that’s exactly what he’d like to do. The only question is, can he?

That’s what Islanders GM Garth Snow had to say on the radio the other day when asked if Ted Nolan’s decision to play Wade Dubielewicz instead of Rick DiPietro on Thursday against the Rangers.

This is Snow’s second season as Islanders GM and let me say that I think he has a [Ric] flair for the dramatics. Last season, he made a huge move at the deadline and this year, he’s gotten into verbal fisticuffs with a few people in the college hockey scene and now it seems he’s starting to argue with his coach. Right now, this is probably the last thing this team needs to deal with. Instead, they should be focusing on getting some goals.

If I was Garth Snow, rather than argue with one of the only great things I have on my team [Nolan, obviously], I’d call up Kyle Okposo and give him a cup of coffee. If not to get the offense started, then to give the fans a little more excitement.

Just for the record, I’d just like to say while Snow wants to keep DP in net and Nolan wants to desperately inject some passion into his quickly flat lining team, in the end, it doesn’t matter who’s in net for this team. The way the offense and defense are right now, Patrick Roy, in his prime no less, would request a trade. The defense makes too many mistakes in crunch time and the offense simply doesn’t finish. After watching the Rangers game finally from Thursday, it’s apparent. This team needs a game breaker. Someone who opposing teams don’t want to play against, no a bunch of second and third liners with heart. Those guys are needed, but not in the excess the Islanders have them in.

If I was Ted Nolan, I would be taking a long look at guys like Sean Bergenheim and Jeff Tambellini. Try them on the first line even. They can skate, are dynamic in the offensive end and will make the opposition pay for their mistakes. They just need more polish and need to play with skilled players. Right now, Bill Guerin and Mike Comrie are the closest thing the Islanders have to that and the youngsters need an opportunity to truly strut their stuff.

Much like last year, this team is going to have to make a plethora of decisions when it comes to who is staying and who is going. Instead of making those decisions tough ones, let the youngsters develop and build from within. Veterans the likes of Brendan Witt and Mike Sillinger and anyone else that is good in the locker room are a must and signing a few character guys would be cool, but make sure the spotlight is where it should be, the young guys.

Let me ask you guys a question: when was the last time the Islanders drafted a player and he went straight to the NHL? How many flubs and flops has this team had over the past decade, or rather, how many players were given up on prematurely? For this team to truly escape the chains of mediocrity, they’re going to have to change the way they do business. This season may already be in the books for the most part, but that doesn’t mean that things can’t start changing now.

If the Islanders ever needed a win this season, it would be tonight. Hopefully, they learn from the mistakes they made on defense and play tighter against the Jaromir Jagr, Sean Avery and Brandon Dubinsky line. Even though they weren’t a huge factor in the outcome of the game, they had way too much room on the ice and the Isles were lucky it didn’t come back and hurt them.

While that may be a huge concern tonight, it’s not the only one. There’s a question as to who gets the start in net today, Wade Dubielewicz or Rick DiPietro. I for one think DP should sit for as long as Dubielewicz is playing well. Competition for playing isn’t something DP has ever had to deal with in his playing career and it will probably do him some good. He hasn’t had the same luster and polish to his game that he had in the fist half and it’s hurt the team on a few occasions. As far as big games go, I understand that when you sign a goalie to a ridiculous contract like the one DP signed last season that you expect him to play in games like these, but you have to ride the hot hand.

I also think that the Isles defense, over the last five starts Dubie has had, has been much better than they usually are. I think they know that they have to skate harder and they’re not going to have DP playing the puck all the time, so they’re naturally more physical and hustle a little more. That’s what this team needs right now, an injection of hustle, grit and passion.

Send Bergie Up!- Speaking of quality attributes in a hockey player, Sean Bergenheim, despite his lack of finish this season, has grown immensely as a player over the past few weeks. He’s skating with more of a purpose out there and isn’t the uncontrollable firecracker he was his first two seasons with the team. I personally think that he could have twice as many assists if he played with people that could finish more as well. He brings energy to whatever line he’s on and takes the body, something the Islanders don’t have too much of aside from Trent Hunter. What I’m trying to say here is that Bergie should get a shot on the first line and with the team struggling on offense, it should happen SOON. Andy Hilbert can go and play with Miroslav Satan and Richard Park and it won’t hurt the Isles at all; as a matter of fact, it can only help them at this point..

Taking Bergenheim off of that line won’t kill its production either because Hilbert and Park will still create space for Satan for hustling in the corners. Bergenheim’s role with Bill Guerin and Mike Comrie would give that line the energy and spunk it desperately needs right now.

Just my crazy thoughts on what looks to be another crazy game tonight.

If their 53 shot performance on Sunday is any indication of how badly they want to get into the playoffs, then I’m not satisfied. Right now, the Islanders are like a fat man that finds the love of his life, but doesn’t want to settle down for fear of the woman cramping his style. The Islanders effort is good intentioned and at times it’s darn solid, but it just feels like they can’t put everything into this. If they did, they would have won on Sunday and wouldn’t be on the outside of the playoff picture, looking in.

This season has been so perplexing that I can’t even find the words to describe how flaccid the offense is. You have proven goal scorers like Miroslav Satan and Bill Guerin struggling for consistency, you have guys like Josef Vasicek, Mike Comrie and Ruslan Fedotenko getting more ice time than ever before and not taking full advantage of it and you have players like Andy Hilbert, Trent Hunter and Sean Bergenheim that can’t finish, despite having plenty of golden opportunities.

Seriously, despite the fact that these guys contribute in plenty of other areas on the ice, they should all have 15 to 20 goals at this point in the season considering all the chances they’ve had. Combined this season, they have 333 shots, for a measly 24 goals. For those that can’t take stats like shooting percentage very seriously, this is still a scary number. For those that do, you’re probably crying as I speak. While these guys don’t technically control the Islanders destiny, they could make things a lot easier if they started chipping in more offensively.

I’ve said it before, I think Hunter is the next captain on this team and Bergenheim can be a 20-30 goal scorer in this league if he finishes more. Hilbert has been a consistent goal scorer at every level he’s played at, except the NHL. If he doesn’t step up his game soon, he may get another chance for a 20-goal season…in the AHL.

A few goals from these guys tonight against a surging Rangers club might be just what the doctor ordered.

Unless this situation has been going on for quite some time, DP really has no excuses. Then you have the fans that think that a professional athlete can’t let their personal life get in the way of their job. I stand somewhere in the middle of that. I think they should do their best to perform on the ice and keep distractions to a minimum. I know as well that it is impossible to not think about those things when they happen and sometimes being at work can only make it worse.

Adding in the fact that Rico has long wanted to be in this situation, to be the Martin Brodeur and Tim Cheveldae of the Islanders, and you guys know what I’m going to say, he has to step it up. He has to continue to prove himself every time he steps on the ice. This team isn’t good enough for him to take a night off or let a bad goal affect him the rest of the night.

Just to clarify things for you guys, anyone that hasn’t come across these stats should be aware of them. I usually don’t like to let stats tell the entire story, but here, they stand out.

In the Islanders 26 wins that DP has been on the ice for, he has a remarkable 1.94 GAA and a .931 save percentage. If that doesn’t prove how valuable to this team, then I don’t know what else does. In contrast, when the Isles lose, DP has a 3.34 GAA [shades of Kevin Weekes Islander days, eh] and a save percentage of .883. There isn’t a team in the NHL that could win with a goalie playing like that. In addition, since the All-Star break, DP’s GAA is 3.06, with a .887 save percentage. Those numbers to me, are glaring ones. Sure, playing in front of a team that has a depleted defense core and isn’t scoring on the powerplay can’t help matters, but the Isles need DP to regain his form very quickly or else this ship is going to hit an iceberg.

Also, in a bizarre exchange after the team’s overtime win against the Thrashers on Thursday, Islanders head coach Ted Nolan may have inadvertently told the media that DP has been playing injured lately. This is just the Islanders luck. Let’s face it, he hasn’t been himself over the past six games and somehow the Isles have managed to scratch out a couple of wins. If this guy breaks down during the stretch, Wade Dubielewicz is going to have to work his magic again or they’ll have to find a way to get him some rest. Against Philadelphia, the Isles need DP in the lineup. This is a must win game and the Isles need the best they have on the ice. Against Florida tomorrow, the Isles can afford to play Dubie [considering that Florida is pretty much out of the playoff picture, that is unless they too can get white hot down the stretch] and grind out a win.

If Witt plays today and gets a good 18-20 minute night under his belt, he should be ready to assume more responsibility on Sunday. That will make life easier for Dubie and won’t force him to steal the show. Just to set the record straight, I do think that Dubielewicz is a more than competent understudy to DP, I just think it’s hard to predict how he’s going to play when he only gets on the ice on a monthly basis. He’s guided this team to plenty of important victories since he’s been here, but you never really know what you’re going to expect.

The Isles powerplay is also going to have to step up and make life easier for the defense. Bryan Berard doesn’t have to deal with Marc-Andre Bergeron taking his ice time anymore and needs to continue to play the way he has been lately. I’d also like to see Nolan give the Kid Line some time with the man advantage as well. They’ve worked well together since the organization put some faith in them and the way the powerplay has looked lately, what do they have to lose?

NEXT DAY EDIT-It totally slip my mind that Nielsen was injured. That line’s whole dynamic is completely different now. Look for them to continue what they did against Philly, which was playing against the other team’s fourth line.

“As a great mind once said, the harder you work, the luckier you get,” Islanders head coach Ted Nolan told the Associated Press after the team beat the Washington Capitals 3-2 on Wednesday. “And we’ve been working very hard the last couple of games.”

Going without defensemen Brendan Witt, Andy Sutton and Bruno Gervais, the Islanders have gotten amazing defensive efforts from Radek Martinek and Freddy Meyer, who have consistently been playing over 24 minutes a night over the past half dozen games. That’s not to say that the rest of the Islanders defense isn’t holding its weight either. Bryan Berard, Aaron Johnson and recent call up Drew Fata have been playing big minutes in all situations, while Marc-Andre Bergeron is slowly getting out of the offensive funk he’s been in since he All-Star break.

On the offensive front, the Islanders are finally starting to get consistent offensive production from all four lines. Mike Comrie has eight points in his last eight games, while the newly formed “Grind Line” of Ruslan Fedotenko, Josef Vasicek and Trent Hunter has been white hot, scoring a combined seven goals and adding 11 assists during the team’s winning streak. Miroslav Satan [three goals in his past four games] and Sean Bergenheim [six points in his last eight games] have stepped up their games as well and have helped provide the Islanders with the most balance they’ve had on offense all season.

“I feel our line’s playing better,” Fedotenko told the AP after the Isles defeated the Thrashers 4-1 on Feb. 16. “Everything’s working right now.”

With the offense starting to produce and the depleted defense managing to defy the odds, Islanders goaltender Rick DiPietro has also been solid, bouncing back from a string of sub-par outings against the Ducks, Penguins and Canadiens. Already with 24 wins, DiPietro has an opportunity this season to be the first Islanders goaltender in team history to win 30 games in three consecutive years. If the team’s defense manages to keep the pieces together, DiPietro and his teammates may shock the NHL matchmakers that predicted they’d miss the playoffs for the second time in three seasons.

“We’re trying to make the playoffs. That’s what’s on our minds,” DiPietro told the AP on Wednesday. “We dug ourselves a hole and now we have to dig ourselves out.”