MONTREAL — This just in: GM Garth Snow says the Islanders will keep the identity of the first overall selection in the 2010 Entry Draft a secret until it’s time to announce the pick from their table.
The season can’t be about the Lighthouse Project. It can’t be about local election results. It can’t be about the owner and whether or not Charles Wang, who has every right to be impatient with the process, is going to seek to sell the club if he does not receive approval to begin construction on his project.
It can’t be.
This season has to be about progress. This season has to be about putting a product on the ice that’s worth the price of admission.
This season can’t be about head coach Scott Gordon all but declaring that his team will be in its typical trade-deadline, veteran-dump mode, as he did a couple of weeks ago in explaining that moving captain Doug Weight to left wing would “make him more attractive to our team and 29 other teams down the road.”
John Tavares is as advertised. He’s a scoring machine. The manchild could use some help — no doubt a strong veteran presence on the wing capable of setting him up would come in handy — but the Tavares-Kyle Okposo budding relationship should be an enjoyable one to monitor as it progresses.
Dwayne Roloson and Martin Biron, however, have been anything but as advertised, with Roloson specifically the club’s biggest disappointment. It appeared Snow had corrected the goaltending deficiency that undermined last year’s team by signing the two veteran free agents to stabilize the position until Rick DiPietro’s projected, but hardly anticipated, return. Yet somehow the pair has been less reliable than last season’s Yann Danis-Joey McDonald tandem.
It’s understandable that Wang would be reluctant to throw bad money in after good without approval for his Lighthouse Project, but the fact is that in most cases you get what you pay for, and the Islanders reached the salary cap floor of $40.8 million only by including potential Entry Level and over-35 bonuses of approximately $4.75 million to reach the NHL’s minimum threshold.
A younger team will have a lower payroll, that’s understood. A team that can’t attract premium free agents because of inferior facilities will have a lower payroll as well, and that’s the Islanders.
Understand, Lighthouse may determine whether Wang wants to keep the Islanders on Long Island (or in neighboring precincts such as Brooklyn or Queens), but unless Gary Bettman has perjured himself repeatedly in the Coyotes’ court case in Phoenix, the NHL is committed to keeping clubs in their home markets if buyers can be found for them. It is impossible to believe that prospective purchasers would not step up to keep the Islanders in New York as long as a new arena is in the equation.
But this season isn’t about that. It can’t be about that. It has to be about an improving product on the ice. It has to be about making a save or two in nets. It has to be about developing an identity. It has to be about giving the fans a reason to spend their good money to watch a bad team play hockey.
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Imagine the uproar if the Stanley Cup playoffs were officiated down to the level of the umpiring in major league baseball’s postseason. Imagine the outcry of, “The NHL wants the Rangers to win!” if the Blueshirts ever were beneficiaries of bad calls the way the Yankees (among others, to be sure) have been thus far.
Truth be told, NHL officiating seems improved over the early portion of the season. The referees seem to be allowing the game to breathe thus far. They seem to be operating under more of a common-sense approach as opposed to the coloring-by-numbers method that had overtaken the profession since the end of the lockout.
Maybe it’s as simple as Kerry Gregson replacing the micro-managing Stephen Walkom as the director of officiating. Maybe the referees are now less concerned about cronyism than they are with doing their jobs.
Then again, maybe it’s because Bill McCreary finally retired.
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The question, posed in e-mails from disgruntled fans in the Albany region (as opposed to the gruntled ones who never seem to write), is why the Rangers are blacked out on television when Sabres’ games conflict even though the capitol region is in far closer proximity to Manhattan than Buffalo.
The answer, as provided in an e-mail by deputy commissioner Bill Daly is that the Albany region is a “shared territory” for the Sabres, Rangers, Devils and Islanders, and that the Sabres are given precedence, “because the Rangers’ footprint has traditionally pushed north and east (not north and west) and the Sabres’ out-of-market territory has historically been New York State outside of the metropolitan area.”
If, then, you’re a Rangers fan whose footprints are north and east of the city, you likely are making them on a beach off the Atlantic Ocean. But you might be able to watch the games.