The Islanders raised all the echoes over the last week, but that isn’t this team’s most significant achievement.
By forcing the Penguins to six games before overtime elimination at the Coliseum last night despite outplaying wobbly Pittsburgh by a substantial margin, the Islanders raised expectations.
Without expectations, there is nothing in sports.
Without expectations, there have been the Islanders, isolated in a peculiar warp of irrelevance for most of the last decade.
But not anymore. Or at least not for the moment.
Because even though — or, who knows, maybe even because — Brooklyn looms, there are the Rangers to suck up the attention hockey receives around these parts unless there is something extraordinary happening across the moat surrounding Manhattan.
Or even if something extraordinary is happening, because the score in Stanley Cups since 1980 is Islanders and Devils 7, Rangers 1, and none of that ever made much of an impact here because Original Six always has had more cache and appeal than Silver Seven.
There are expectations now from the Islanders, who will have the responsibility to build off this season and off this week.
There are expectations on management to conduct business in a manner that will honor the franchise, its fans and its players and to cut the cord with hokey moves that are motivated as much by reaching the payroll floor as reaching for the competitive ceiling.
It is not about romance on the Island and it won’t be about romance after the move into the boroughs. It will be about the grunt work, about the daily grind that separates first-round challengers and Stanley Cup winners.
You’re darn right John Tavares is as worth the price of admission as he is worthy of the Hart Trophy. There are Tavares and Henrik Lundqvist on a pedestal of their own in these hockey parts, allowing, of course, for Martin Brodeur on our ice sculpture of Mount Rushmore.
Kyle Okposo seems to have become the player we’ve all been waiting for these last few years. Josh Bailey does appear to have been worth all of the maneuvering that preceded his selection in the Entry Draft, after all. Matt Moulson, pitched to the Rangers a long time ago as a free agent, is a core guy.
It is impossible not to admire the way Travis Hamonic competes or the dependable professionalism emanating from Mark Streit. It is the fault of none of these players, none of the laborers, that they have been a punch line for years.
There is speed up front and there is patient poise behind the bench, from where Jack Capuano and his staff have cultivated improvement without accepting youth or the payroll as excuses for failure.
The path here, to the overtime of Game 6 of the first round and to accompanying accolades was actually the easy part. It’s not about being quirky anymore. It’s about solidifying. About building on a solid foundation. About getting from here to there by becoming the type of franchise that can attract marquee free agents.
It won’t be about the building in Brooklyn. It will be about the organization.
The Islanders have been playing with house money against the Penguins, and I bet you thought it was Charles Wang’s money. This is the last time for that.
One round doesn’t quite qualify as a joy ride. But it has sure been fun. The Islanders have raised the echoes. They have raised expectations.
Now comes the hard part. Now it gets serious. It’s about time.
* Yes, I had Jonas Brodin as one of my top three for the Calder (behind Brandon Saad and Brendan Gallagher) but I don’t think the first-pair Minnesota defenseman’s omission from the top three rookie vote-getters is a sign the system of balloting is broken.
And no, I did not have Jonathan Toews in my top three for the Hart even though he’d be among my top three skaters with whom I’d start a team—maybe top two—and I don’t think it’s a sign of ignorance or an outrage that the Chicago center finished behind Tavares, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby (in no particular order) in the MVP balloting.
What I could never understand about the Hart, by the way, is that Bobby Orr didn’t win it every year of his career in Boston.
* You won’t ever find unanimity in the NHL, except for the belief officiating is by far the weakest part of the game, a notion reinforced this spring.
The American net is going to be in pretty good hands in Sochi, don’t you think, with Jonathan Quick and Craig Anderson at the top of the depth chart?
Paul MacLean isn’t the most sensitive guy on the planet, that’s become obvious enough, but then there’s nothing sensitive about the way the Walrus’ team plays hockey.
Nobody but nobody plays with more heart than Brandon Prust, but it’s the other body parts that are likely to go way before the end of his four-year deal with Montreal.
Add Vancouver to the dubious achievement roster of the most excellent teams that failed to win, one with the GAG Line Rangers and French Connection Sabres at the top.
Or as we call it here, Emile’s List.