A few months ago, I ran into former Ranger tough guy and fan favorite Nick Fotiu, who shared his thoughts on the rivalry with the Islanders in the late 70s and 80s. Over the course of the interview, Fotiu also spoke about how he was actually Scott Gordon’s coach at one point in his career, making the interview that much more interesting to Islander fans who otherwise wouldn’t have been interested in what Fotiu had to say [especially since he made a name for himself checking the hell out of every Islander he could get his hands on during his heyday].

After the game, I had an opportunity to ask him a few questions about just how intense the rivalry was between the Islanders and Rangers.

The Drive for Five: You played a big part in the Islanders/Rangers rivalry in the 70s and 80s. What was it like for you?

Ron Duguay: What made it exciting aside from the teams being so close in proximity, was the fans. I’m sure that there were probably more fights in the stands than on the ice at times and it was fitting since the fans were the ones that really created this rivalry. On top of that, both teams really enjoyed playing against each other and there was a respect. It wasn’t like when we played Philadelphia, when it was a gong show. When we played the Islanders, it was hard-nosed hockey.

TDFF: Was there a player on the Islanders that you were scared to hit the ice with?

Duguay: No. I just knew and was always aware that if I went into Denis Potvin’s zone, I was going to get hit and hit hard. Other than that, I think everyone always played hard and were respectful of each other.

Photo Patrick Hickey Jr.

Posted under 2008-2009, NHL, Random Rant

This is always one of my favorites times of the year, but the way things are going with the Islanders this year, things have the potential of getting very ugly, very fast.

Considering the fact that there seems to be a rift between several of the older players and Isles head coach Scott Gordon, many of the team’s veterans could be on the move.

I’m also wondering if Trent Hunter’s supposed lower body injury has more to do with his relationship with Gordon [I have no idea what it is, but if it's rocky, we may have seen the last of him] than anything with his lower body.

As of right now, it just feels like the team has had enough of many of the veterans on the team.

Jon Sim, for example, goes and plays his best game as an Islander and is put on waivers the very next day. The guy has been playing great hockey as of late after a whole season of under-performing and as soon as he gets going, you attempt to give him away? I don’t know if I agree with the logic there. He’s signed for an agreeable one million dollars next season and if he continues to produce, he’ll have a dozen goals in about 60 games. That’s not too shabby for a guy that scored 17 a few years ago with a plethora of ice time. Why they wouldn’t want to just ride him out until he stops scoring is beyond me.

What they are doing right now is slapping him in the face. Putting him on waivers once and not having anyone pick up was bad enough, now putting him back there while he’s playing his best hockey is the ultimate disrespect. Now if no one picks him up, what’s the next step? Throw a player you’ve already proven to have no faith in and that you’ve shown has no value to the 29 other teams in the rest of the league back in the lineup? Like I said, he’s still got another year on his contract and you’ve already made him miserable this season, so what exactly is this guys incentive to play hard for you? That’s the big problem here. Now he has none.

Simply put, doing things like this will inhibit free agents from coming over in the future. Add in the fact that the Islanders obviously already have problems signing players that they need to and this is not good news.

Not good business dealings if you ask me.

Posted under 2008-2009, Random Rant

Hockeybuzz.com says the Islanders are on the market, Chris Botta calls their bluff and the piece is taken off the site before being put back on.

The question I’m about to ask may appear to be a simple one, but it is still one that has to be asked.

“What is going on here?”

I know that it appears that the Islanders Lighthouse Project is destined to the same fate as what’s going on with the New Jersey Nets in Brooklyn, but are they really on the market? Are things are bad as the last time this team was sold? I don’t think so. This team would have made the playoffs last season if it was not for injuries and would be .500 if they had a healthy defense and Rick DiPietro around.

Sure, Islanders owner Charles Wang has sunk a plethora of money into this team and has lost most of it, but chalk it up as a learning experience. Rather than buy a champion like he tried to do when he first came here, Wang now has to do the same thing every other team is doing now, which is building through good trades and draft picks.

Before the Islanders are attempted to be moved, he should at least give this team a few more years to see what he has with Josh Bailey, Kyle Okposo and the host of other youngsters that are starting to ripen. I don’t think he’ll be too displeased in the end, especially if they continue to build through the draft over the next few seasons.

Nonetheless, it’s never good to hear that the team you watch is thinking about taking their business elsewhere.

Luckily, one thing that isn’t tough to understand or decipher. This organization is starting to build a dedication to it’s youngsters , not only for the rest of the rest of the season, but the future as well.

“At the end of the day, there was nothing to lose,” Islanders head coach Scott Gordon told the AP before the Florida game a few night’s ago when asked about why the youth on the team are getting more minutes. I knew it would be a pretty tall order to make the playoffs; we’d have to go something like 30 and 10 and that’s a hard thing to expect. It’s not like we abandoned our older players, but we’re giving the opportunity to the younger players. Along the way, I think that made us a better team.”

With Gordon understanding the team’s MO and doing whatever it takes to help them accomplish their goals, the Islanders need time for all the pieces to come together.

Will they get it?

That perhaps is the most important question of all.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Thoughts 2009, Random Rant

Dubie Upset with move?- “(GM) Garth (Snow) called me and I thought he was joking around. But he wasn’t,” Dubielewicz told the Associated Press after learning about his sudden move to Columbus following the Islanders’ morning skate. “I have mixed emotions a little bit. Once I signed with the Islanders, my heart was set on being here.”

You can’t help but feel bad for the kid, especially considering what he’s done for the team over the few seasons. Sure, some would say that the Islanders never put any real faith in him when they signed Joey MacDonald to a two-year contract, with the second being of the one-way variety, but I believe the fans of this team never gave up on him.

When word passed that he had been brought aboard, it gave Islanders fans a reason to smile.

Those moments alone have been few are far between this season.

This time it was the Columbus Blue Jackets that were taking a crap in the Isles’ cereal. Playing far more than the role of spoiler this season, the BJ’s did what they had to do to give themselves a chance to make the playoffs and for that you can’t blame them, but for what they did to the Islanders fans in general, don’t expect many cheers the next time they play at the coliseum.

Guerin’s quote the other night- “It’s disheartening to see where we are right now,” Guerin told New York Post. “What could have been, who knows? But you never come to grips with losing, I don’t care what the situation is. Never. It’s miserable. But I feel like we’ve held up our end of the bargain. We’ve produced on our end, and it’s disappointing to be where we’re at. I think we’ve both done our parts.”

Sounds pretty miserable if you ask me.

I like the fact that he hasn’t gotten used to losing, but as far as keeping up his part of the bargain- I’m not too sure of that one. Sure, he’s on pace for a 26-goal season, three more than he was this season, but take into consideration that he only has three goals in his last 18 games, in which the the team has gone 3-15 in and it’s easy to see that Guerin’s play hasn’t helped the Islanders fortunes.

Is he to blame? Absolutely not. Only an idiot could blame one player for the crap storm this team has had to deal with this season, but as captain Guerin has got to step it up and get these youngsters going.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Thoughts 2009, Random Rant

The tired old cliché “There’s something in the water,” couldn’t ring truer here.

A month or so ago Islanders defenseman Thomas Pock received a five-game suspension for delivering an elbow shiver to the head of Ottawa Senators forward Ryan Shannon. Why it wasn’t the cleanest play in the world, it was more of a hard elbow “leaning” than a straightforward elbow delivered with malicious intent to injure. Seriously, what I used to do to Karl Malone when I played NBA Jam in arcades throughout Brooklyn during the late-’90s would have been far worse if it wasn’t virtual.

Over the weeks that followed,that incident, we’ve a couple of other elbows thrown with much better precision and accuracy, to only land shorter suspensions.

We’ve also seen the NHL’s poster boy, Sidney Crosby, punch someone in their nads and get nothing for it.

Now, it appears that Jarkko Ruutu is a lot more than an annoying Fin, who is in serious need of a phone booth meeting with someone like Eric Cairns.

He’s a vampire.

Biting the hand of Buffalo Sabres forward Andrew Peter’s the other night, Ruutu gets only a two-game suspension? I know that the injury a player suffers in lieu of the incident and what the league has charged other players with when similar infractions occur play a part in the end result, but seriously NHL, two games?

Biting someone in any sport is a grotesque action, even in MMA contests. A two-game suspension is a slap on the wrist. If it was something questionable, a-la a hit from semi-behind with two moving players, that is one thing, especially when you consider how fast this game is, but when a player’s glove is in your face and you decide to bite it, you don’t belong on the ice, you belong in a doctor’s office.

The Dallas Stars took the moral high road when they told Sean Avery to take a hike, maybe it’s time for Senators to do the same thing with Ruutu.

That seems extremely unlikely however when the league dishes out insignificant penalties such as these. Also considering how the game isn’t allowed to police itself the way it did, say, a decade ago, guys like Ruutu, if reined in properly, are worth a ton to teams. If this happened in 1994, I can easily rattle off a list of players on the Sabres alone that would have challenged Ruutu right after this occurred. In today’s NHL however, skill supersedes heart and loyalty, making for a game that I sometimes have a problem of recognizing.

Posted under 2008-2009, NHL, Random Rant

Nothing against Carey Price, who is having an amazing season for the Canadiens, but Mike Komisarek, who has only played 21 games this season, Alexei Kovalev, who is not having anywhere close to an All-Star season and Andrei Markov [don't get me wrong about Markov, he's a good player, having a good year] are not All-Star game starters.

When I first found out the news, I thought it was a joke.

Sadly, I’d do anything to make sure it was.

The way technology is right now, people that have the spare time, can push players into All-Star games that don’t necessarily deserve to be there. I mean C’mon, former Islander Dave McLlwain has his own fan site for Christ sake.

In the midst of this lunacy however what happens to a player who deserves to start at the All-Star game like Mark Streit? What about Mike Green? Simply put, this is a travesty. It’s almost like the knuckleheads that almost got Rory Fitzpatrick into the game a few years ago were actually Cylons [sorry for the Battlestar Galactica reference, I've been addicted to it lately] and were programmed to just piss logical people and hockey fans like myself off.

As far as the Western Conference is concerned, I’m not as mad at the Western Conference, mainly because guys like Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Ryan Getzlaf are three of the best young players in this game and even though Brian Campbell is having an off year and Scott Niedermayer is winding down an impressive career, these are guys that have much better name recognition than Markov and Komisarek and guys that fans want to see on the ice.

I can’t say the same thing about Komisarek and Kovalev to anyone who isn’t a fan of the Habs.

In spite of all of that though, when only four out of 30 teams are represented in the starting lineup of an All-Star team, you know there’s a problem. Where are the Bruins, Red Wings and Rangers in all of this? Where are the San Jose Sharks?

Let the Habs fans out there have their moment in the sun. Their hosting the game anyway. However, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the fans in the league will be able to take them seriously the rest of the season.

At the end of the day, these fans will only be able to look down at themselves and understand what mistake they made, robbing good young players of an opportunity to get what they deserve.

Those same fans will see something else when they look down as well.

A pair of red, white and blue Clown shoes.

Posted under 2008-2009, Random Rant

Growing up an Islander fan and seeing the team miss the playoffs for nearly a decade, you get used to cheering for the hard worker. You know, guys like Patrick Flatley, Claude Lapointe, Kenny Jonsson, Steve Webb, Mike Peca and now of course, Richard Park and Sean Bergenheim.

Seeing the way these guys have played as of late is one of the only reasons why I haven’t put my foot through the TV. The same thing goes for Kyle Okposo, Blake Comeau and Mike Comrie, who have played their tails off over the past week.

In spite of the happiness these guys have been giving me lately however, I find myself watching this team score more goals than everyone thought they were capable of, but making crucial mistakes on defense that cost them games. Defense was supposed to be one of the team’s strong points this season, but I think the Isles are really missing Andy Sutton and Radek Martinek right now. That combined with a less than mediocre game from Rick DiPietro and the Islanders were sunk in the water.

So, as a result, the hard work of five or six players every night goes down the toilet…again.

But why?

I’ve said it before this season and I’ll say it again; right now, it just feels like the Islanders have to play as close a perfect game as possible to come out on top. One mistake, one defensive zone breakdown, one bad goal and this team has trouble coming back. It doesn’t help matters either that they are too concerned with playing dump and chase than establishing a forecheck and playing puck possession hockey. Sure, they play with a sense of urgency over the last two minutes and lately have shown enough spunk and jam to clean up a few messes, but in the end, it isn’t enough. This team is missing two many pieces and that, combined with DP’s problems, will make this team a big time contender in the John Tavares sweepstakes this summer.

I hate saying it, but as of right now, this team is a good two or three seasons from getting to where they were they need to be.

Weight gets 1,000 and 1,001- Seeing Weight’s kids run around with the banner trying to get the numbers right was one of the most adorable things I’ve seen in quite some time. It was about time he got that monkey off his back and even though it would have been great to see him get the point in front of the fans at home, the PA announcer in Phoenix did a stand-up thing and let Weight have his moment. Hopefully, now that he’s healthy again, he gives us a few more before the season’s over.

Bailey’s first- See what happens when this kid shoots? I know he’s a great passer, but he needs to stop being Adam Oates or Brendan Morrison and turn into someone like Doug Gilmour. With his stick-handling, skating and passing ability, I don’t see any reason why Bailey can’t eventually be a 20-goal, 65-point guy in this league. He’s just got to shoot more and be willing to make mistakes. Right now, he’s trying to be too perfect and much like his teammates, is failing at it.

Posted under 2008-2009, Post Game Rants, Random Rant

Rather than talks about the Islanders specifically today, I figured I’d take the time out to address the actions of Sydney Crosby over the past week.

You see, Crosby for all his talent, obviously has a vision problem. The other night, he thought Boris Valabik’s testicles were a punching bag. If you haven’t seen what happened, check it out here a few times.

Many of you guys know how I feel about fighting in this league. If you don’t, or you’re a first time reader, here it is. I feel that fighting serves a necessary function in the game and even if it didn’t, it’s entertaining and fans that aren’t necessarily interested in the game like to see it, which is good for the league as well. But when two guys are hitting a guy all over his body, that just not cool. That’s something I’d see on TNA Impact or WWE Raw, not in a professional hockey game. The team I cover in the EPHL, the Brooklyn Aces [here's a cheap plug, AcesOverBrooklyn.com] would never do something like that, so why do fans and media alike have to watch this in the best league in the world?

I’ll tell you why.

Sidney Crosby is untouchable and the league doesn’t care that he still has a ton of growing up to do. He was handed poster boy status in this league before his first game and in spite of his jaw-dropping offensive totals, he’s not the cleanest player in the league either. Right now, Crosby is like a young mafioso. He’s got more power than he could ever dream of and has all the right people watching his back. I mean seriously, this is a guy that from day one was living with Mario Lemieux. You can say whatever you want about Wayne Gretzky, but “The Great One” got initiated into the league by Billy Smith’s stick a few times before the Oilers started getting smart to having him protected. The Penguins on the other hand, have Crosby protected better than the pope.

One day though, someone in this league is going to make him pay for the things he’s done on the ice, like this, that are extremely questionable. Hell, in a one on one scrap, Valabik would destroy Crosby; he’s 6′7 240 pounds. But Crosby getting in a one on one scrap with someone legitimate and not named Andrew Ference will never ever happen because it’ll turn into something from the movie “The Warriors” in a heartbeat out there. If Gary Bettman is in the arena, you bet h’d jump out on the ice in defense of Crosby too.

However, that is what may be necessary for the maturation process to truly begin with someone aptly nicknamed “Sid the Kid.”

For the rest of the players in the NHL, a suspension would be mandatory for something like this, but Crosby is like Steven Segal for some reason. No, he’s not fat and doesn’t choke out baby seals on “Family Guy,” he’s just “Above the Law.” Why Bettman can guys get away with things like this and Thomas Pock gets a five game penalty for an elbow that did nothing? Why?

This isn’t even the first time someone has been borderline molested on the ice and nothings happened either. Remember last season when Garnett Exelby tried to castrate Blake Comeau?

If you haven’t seen this either, here it is.

After watching this and knowing that Exelby and Crosby never got suspended for these actions, it’s easy to see that the NHL has a sadomasochistic fetish here. They love seeing players getting hit in the chops. Why else would they let players get away with things like this? Exelby isn’t anywhere on the same level as Crosby and yet he got away with deliberately sphering someone in the nads. Knowing this, it’s fair to say that league probably has burned DVDs of the best chop shots and play them on slow nights or when the Lightning and Islanders are playing against one another.

While I can ultimately live with Exelby’s actions because I know it was out of sheer frustration [anyone remember that game?], Crosby does things like this because he can get away with it. He knows he’s untouchable.

Maybe I have a huge problem with this because of the way I was raised. Where I come from, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, no one is untouchable and the second they think they are, they wake up with a horse’s head in their bed or they get what’s coming to them. It’s a natural thing. Everyone shows respect to one another and if not, you pay the price.

If Crosby isn’t show the light soon, he’s going to have to pay a price he can’t afford.

Posted under 2008-2009, NHL, Random Rant

Over the past two years, the Islanders have been an extremely interesting team to watch, changing team motif’s and ideas faster than an OCD patient at IHOP.

However, during that time, Ted Nolan’s hard-working attitude and approach was always prevalent. Regardless of who was on the team, Alexei Yashin, Ryan Smyth,Mike Comrie, he made sure his players worked for their minutes. When they didn’t, they were benched. That included players like Miroslav Satan and Rick DiPietro. For being that dedicated to the success of his team and not caring about the consequences, I applaud him.

But in the end, that’s why he lost his job.

There seems to be a logic-famine of sorts on Long Island for the past few months, as Rick DiPietro has more of a say in when he gets to play than his coach and even though we all know now that DP was hurt and Wade Dubielewicz was the better goalie at the time, Isles GM Garth Snow decided to stick by his franchise player, rather than his coach. You can’t blame Nolan for trying to assert himself though, he took the team to the playoffs the year before and had quickly become a fan-favorite and made the team semi-respected again.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to gain the confidence of the organization.

And why would it be? This is the Islanders we’re talking about. A team that let another great coach, Peter Laviolette, go a few years ago because they felt he wasn’t a strong enough presence in the locker room and the inmates were running the asylum.

Sadly, it took almost a half-decade later for the organization to get the real problems out of the locker room out and the organization, Alexei Yashin and Mike Milbury.

I guess golfing partners are really hard to find on the Island nowadays, huh Mr. Wang?

So while Nolan had every right to do the things he did, he clashed with Snow and that was enough to get the ball rolling. Soon after Snow was questioning Nolan’s actions in front of the media and it was becoming obvious. He wanted Nolan out.

In spite of all of that though, I can’t shake off the feeling that if he would have just been a “yes” man, he’d still have a job.

But Nolan just isn’t that kind of guy.

However, his inability to communicate with Snow wasn’t the only reason why he was forced out. Even though he has a good enough track record coaching youngsters, considering his coaching time in juniors, the Isles used this past season as a way of saying he was unable to help the team with their youth movement.

While I myself was skeptical of how he would have handled the youngsters, let me just say this: there is a huge difference between being forced to play youngsters due to injuries and depending on them to produce through an entire season. While I’ll admit I don’t know how well he would have done this season, I will also admit this: he deserved a shot.

Some will now say that guys like Andy Hilbert and Freddy Meyer, who were Nolan favorites, will have to work harder for their spots on this team, because who ever takes over this team will be more likely to give guys like Bruno Gervais, Jack Hillen and Jeff Tambellini more of a shot. While that may have happened this season with Nolan at the helm, there is no question about it now, this team is looking for a lapdog to carry out the plan Charles Wang and Snow have for the organization.

So again, the Islanders find another way to reduce their eve-sinking credibility in the NHL.

The only question is, who steps in?

Posted under Offseason 2008, Random Rant

I know some of you guys are still a little teed off that the Islanders didn’t make a huge deal at the deadline and didn’t trade away players like Ruslan Fedotenko, Miroslav Satan and Josef Vasicek. Some of you are even mad that the Isles traded Marc-Andre Bergeron. I know this because I received more e-mails about this site yesterday than ever before. Before I get started with today’s post, I want to thank all of you guys for sharing your opinions with me and being so cool about it. Not one person was a creep about it and in all honesty, your comments and e-mails are really what keep me at this. Sometimes I’m so tired from a long day of college and work that I have to literally summon all of my energy to the keyboard in order to write my daily post. Thanks for my making me feel appreciated.

Okay, here’s the think. The Islanders may have cut some of the fat on the team by trading Marc-Andre Bergeron and Chris Simon, but I believe the real fat cutting is beginning right now. Depending on how well players like Fedotenko, Satan and Vasicek play down the stretch, they could in fact play themselves off the team. The Isles have a few extra draft picks now and still have plenty of cap space. I feel that not many people really understand what can be done with this team in the offseason. All that cap space and a handful of players that the Isles can either sign or part ways with, coupled with a host of young players that are proving more and more that they’re NHL ready… I don’t know, seems like fun times to me. They already have a top-tier goalie and a great coach

That doesn’t mean I am giving up on this season though. This team has been consistently inconsistent this season, but they’ve had their moments. When they play solid defense and get the kind of goaltending Rick DiPietro can give them when he’s on, this team gets results. Sure, the powerplay is broken and is partly responsible for the team being on the outside of a playoff spot looking in, but they could have things much worse. I mean seriously, they could be the Los Angeles Kings or the Tampa Bay Lightning. They’re not.

They just have to establish some sort of consistency. At this point in the season, I don’t care if it’s a winning streak or they tank it. I just don’t want to do through another crazy season. Wait, who am I kidding? I’d love to see them make the playoffs on the last day. It would be nuts. However, it shouldn’t have to be that way. They should go into the playoff playing the best hockey of the year and not get in on the skin of their arses.

The way they’ve played the past two games, showing glimpses of what it takes to be a playoff team, but not being able to finish, you can guess where I think they are right now.

To make matters worse, DiPietro wasn’t sharp the other night against the Pens and he’s going to have to be in order to get this team to the playoffs. Is he playing hurt and the media isn’t aware? Mike Sillinger was playing with a hip injury all season and no one knew. His production went down and the media was all over him, wondering why his production was down. DP hasn’t been sharp over the past two games and wasn’t exactly stellar in a few of the games during the recent win streak. I’m not trying to stir the pot here, but it’s definitely a possibility.

Anyway, the Isles have a huge game against the new look Atlanta Thrashers tomorrow that is a must-win. Four points out of a playoff spot and five points out of sixth place, the Isles have to start winning games anyway they can.

It’s go time.

Are the Isles ready?

Posted under Post Game Rants, Random Rant