The Two-Line Pass

Don’t forget about the prizes!!!

The Lead

For those of you unlucky enough to have actually sat through James Cameron’s epic “Avatar,” who then found yourselves additionally luckless to have suffered through tonight’s Ranger game, which was broadcast in 3D, you probably noticed some parallels.

When Avatar begins, there is a single blue speck floating apparently nearer to you than the screen. You can almost touch it. As the hero, whose name I forget, pulls himself from some sort of cryogenic sleep pod and out into the cabin of the ship, the full scope of the movie’s groundbreaking film-making is made apparent. You’re overcome with a definite sense of wonder at what you’re experiencing.

Likewise the first period of the Rangers/Islanders game. The Rangers came out flying, particularly and not surprisingly driven by the Gaborik line, pouring 15 shots on net, getting a little physical and generally outplaying the Islanders. They paid for every mistake they made. For most of the 20 minutes, it looked as though the visitors were standing still while Gaborik picked up a pair of first-period points, and it was 3-0 by the first intermission.

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The Lead

Admittedly I don’t watch many Islander games. Something about how boring it is to watch a one-line team get beat in ways that are, on a night-in-night-out basis, not very interesting. Any time I do happen across an Isles game, it seems like they’re playing juuuust badly enough to be out of reach of their opponents; two- and three-goal deficits, that kinda thing.

And such was the case tonight when I had no choice but to watch their game because that was the only thing on at 7 o’clock. I had literally no interest in a Habs/Sens game that started a half hour later because I didn’t if Alex Kovalev got booed for leaving (even though he’s worse now than he was in Montreal so I don’t see why Habs fans would care). Same for Canucks/Predators at 8, talk about two boring-ass teams.

And so I figured, sure, why not? If nothing else someone’s going to get blown out and the game could get pretty scrappy much to Peter Laviolette’s chagrin. So okay. Flyers/Isles it is. I don’t have a rooting interest. Off we go. If nothing else, this Johnny Tavares kid has been getting his tires pumped a lot this season so maybe I’ll just sit down and watch him all night.

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The Lead

And there it was, the first gigantic hit of the hockey season. Dion Phaneuf on Kyle Okposo.

But given the time of year, this hit has already sparked a good amount of debate (covering several topics) among the Twittering and Facebooking and Messageboarding folks that care far too much about this stuff.

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The Lead

It has been four months and one day since the 2008-09 NHL season wrapped up with Sid Crosby raising the Stanley Cup above his head and while Gary Bettman wept with unbridled joy, wiping away his tears with $100 bills that would later be earmarked for use in the purchase of the Phoenix Coyotes.

But with tonight’s tape-delayed game between the Islanders and Canucks from some inland backwater in Northern British Columbia — there was SNOW on the ground! — NHL hockey began its 103rd “official” season.

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The Lead

There was, of course, much complaining in hockey circles today about the quality of the Versus matchup.

And why not? No. 15 in the West vs. No. 15 in the East waging lusty battle to see which team could possibly play badly enough so as to allow the other to win.

As it turns out, the Avalanche are a far, far more dire team than even I have imagined and lost to the worst team in hockey 4-2 before, from the look of the crowd, 138 fans. Though they put 22 shots on net, Yann Danis stopped them all save for two Ryan Smyth bids to run his nice little streak to five solid games in a row (he’s only allowed five goals in that stretch but somehow went 3-2-0).

And it’s not like the Islanders’ leading scorer lit them up. The goalscorers for New York were Dean McAmmond (already rocking an “A” on his sweater after 10 days or so), Jesse Joensuu, Bruno Gervais and Jeff Tambellini, who netted their fifth, first, first and third goals of the year, respectively.

For Joensuu, who’s pictured above, it was the first of his career in his NHL debut, which is always great to see. Just look at his face. That right there is pure, unadulterated joy.

Sometimes (read: when I post on Puck Daddy) I catch a lot of crap for being too negative about everything in hockey, but seeing something like Joensuu’s first goal PLUS an embarrassing Avalanche loss? Perfect night. Couldn’t get any better than that.

Nothing inspires confidence in the stock market like Gary Bettman and the New York Islanders.

After Bettman and the second-worst team in the league rang the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 100 points from 9,321 to 9,228 in literally a minute. No kidding. Right away.

The Fed had to step in around noon and cut interest rates by half a point just to keep everyone from killing themselves over how bad the Islander offense is going to be this season. It worked for a little while, and the Dow surged back to 9,590 around 2:30.

Then everyone remembered that the Islander defense features Jack Hillen and Brett Skinner, and the market promptly dropped 300 points again.

The Islanders should try to sign Brendan Shanahan or Mats Sundin quick to save those of us on Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street. At least, that’s how I *think* the market works.

At least there's one reason to watch the Islanders. (Nice shoes, Comrie)

We’re now something like 36 days out from the start of the NHL season so I figure this is as good a time as any to start doing the season previews. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) This is early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

New York Islanders, you’re on the clock.

Funny, isn’t it, how a team with this kind of money and this kind of history can be so blitheringly bad.

I mean, the New York Islanders organization is a positively dreadful one. A quick swing by the Isles’ wikipedia page yields the most hilariously understated subheading: “1995-2000: Management issues.” Yeah, you could say that. Since about that time, the Islanders have traded away more high-quality players (Roberto Luongo, Zdeno Chara, Bryan McCabe, Todd Bertuzzi, Olli Jokinen, the pick that became Jason Spezza, Tim Connolly, Taylor Pyatt, etc. etc.) for very little in the way of good return. They also drafted Rick DiPietro, 15-year man though he is, ahead of Dany Heatley and Marian Gaborik.

It’s difficult to imagine where this team would be today were it not for the hideous mismanagement that has plagued the franchise since the mid-1990s and still maintain the ability to understand why it has any fans left at all. After making the playoffs in four of the previous five years, the Islanders finished dead last in the Atlantic division last season and 25th in the NHL.

This is a team that hasn’t won the division since 1987-88, and hasn’t advanced out of the first round of the playoffs since 1992-93. Its first-round picks have been largely so-so the last 10 years, and still, only four remain with the team (2000’s first overall pick DiPietro, 2002’s 22nd pick Sean Bergenheim, 2007’s seventh pick Kyle Okposo, and 2008’s ninth pick Josh Bailey). The rest were traded for parts that include a quarter-season of Ryan Smyth, AHLer Ben Walter, Mike Peca, and Janne Niinimaa.

The sad part is, things are going to be appreciably worse this year.

A capable new coach has arrived in former Providence Bruins boss Scott Gordon, but this is a team with a serious, serious identity crisis that not even a good coach and better guy like Gordon is going to be able to sort out any time soon. It doesn’t know whether it wants a team of veterans (nine players are over 30, and three of those are 37-year-old forwards) or a team of kids with which to begin rebuilding (only seven are under 27). That’s a fine mix and strategy if you, say, have any chance whatsoever of making the playoffs, or have any real star players in their late 20s and early 30s. But the Islanders don’t have that at all. Their top-paid players as far as cap hit are Bill Guerin ($4.5 million at 37), Rick DiPietro ($4.5 million at 26), Doug Weight ($4.3 million at 37), Mark Streit ($4.1 million at 30), and Mike Comrie ($4 million at 27). Does that seem insane to anyone else?

Granted, most of those guys are gone after this season, but they should be gone right now. Doug Weight was a poor signing from Garth Snow (there has yet to be any other kind) and Mark Streit is a hell of a gamble at $4.1 million per over the next five years. A whopping 34 of his 62 points last season came on the top-ranked Montreal power play, and though he wasn’t getting those points despite being bad, he also benefitted tremendously from playing alongside Tomas Plekanec and Alex Kovalev when the Habs were a man up.

At the other end of the spectrum, some kids will be leaned on very heavily. Okposo, the aforementioned 2007 first-round pick that the Isles violently signed from the University of Minnesota midway through last season, scored five points in his nine games up with the Isles and 28 more in 35 down in the AHL. They’re going to look for more of the same output from him. Another promising thing to which Islander fans to look forward, of course, is the young but very impressive blue line pairing of Chris Campoli and Bruno Gervais. Both are very mobile, and wise beyond their years (though at just 23, each has parts of three years’ experience). The problem is that both are also very injury prone. Campoli has missed 66 games over the last two years, but still put up impressive numbers when he was healthy. Gervais has missed 55. Ditto on the numbers.

What the Isles really need to do is blow it up as soon as the season looks lost (I’m thinking that’ll be around Oct. 8 ) and let the kids get their minutes without those pesky 37-year-olds hanging about and trying to tell them about the good ol’ days when skates cost a Loonie. Snow should get whatever he can and start laying the foundation for the team that might eventually make the playoffs again. Pity he won’t have the job when it does.

More after the jump.

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"I don't know what's worse, these shirts or our chances of ever winning a Stanley Cup again"

(Ed. note: A few days ago, I posted a story about Rick DePietro meeting some pro wrestlers and made a few jokes about how bad the Islanders are. This did not sit well with Island residents.

Said IaM Polynomial C of Islander Mania, the official message board of the New York Islanders:

Whoever that guy is, he obviously is full of ****. Probably a Rags fan or just somebody who REALLY hates the Isles.

Neither in fact, I just go for easy targets because I’m lazy. Whatever the indignities hurled my way — being called a Ranger fan! — it appears that trashing the Islanders will get my hitcount up, so here we go again.)

For Islander fans, no news should probably be considered good news.

I’m no expert, but if Sports Illustrated does a 27-page photo essay on your team, you don’t want the following words in its opening paragraph: “Wallowing in mediocrity,” “almost comical ineptitude,” “14 losing seasons.”

But that’s how SI’s spread on the Isles started. And it really only got worse from there.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Isles’ catastrophic slide began, but the 1988-89 season seems as good a place as any. Under Terry Simpson, the third-year successor to legendary coach Al Arbour, the team opened by winning only seven of its first 27 games, prompting GM Bill Torrey to bring back Arbour — to no avail. The Isles finished tied with Quebec for the NHL’s worst record (28-47-5).

Ouch.

SI goes on to detail the many ways in which ownership and management drove the team straight into the ground since those glorious years of the late 1970s and early ’80s, and the adjectives are perhaps not as flowery as Isles fans would like.

Just to hammer the point home and really stir the pot over at Islander Mania, who here recognizes these guys? SI is so full of ****, probably Rags fans or a publication that REALLY hates the Islanders.

Funny, that doesn't LOOK like franchise goalie Rick DiPietro!

DiPietro knows how to lay the smack down (or something)

Because I didn’t feel like I’d posted enough about the Islanders lately, here’s a story on Rick DiPietro attending the WWE’s Great American Bash last night.

“I’m a huge wrestling fan, so I had to come down. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of good matches,” said DiPietro, a 2008 NHL All-Star. “I have a lot of admiration for what they do. It’s a lot harder than what we do. Hockey and sports-entertainment are both strenuous on your body, but with WWE Superstars the amount of work they put their bodies through night-in and night-out is amazing.”

Somehow, I really doubt DiPietro implied that pretending to fight and doing a bunch of flips is harder on the body than playing in the NHL.

DiPi also received a customized Spinner Belt from WWE champ and fellow Boston-area native John Cena. It will almost certainly be the only hardwear he wins in his career.

For more on this, please for the love of god click on the photo gallery. DiPietro isn’t usually this uncomfortable until he’s given up five goals to the Penguins in a period and a half.

Paul Maurice on the Island? Ugh.

The Islanders have begun their search for a new coach, and the list of candidates is long and ridiculous.

The current front-runner is former Maple Leafs coach Paul Maurice, who will interview for the job today.

The list of confirmed Islanders coaching candidates now numbers seven. Besides Maurice, the list includes former Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella and his assistant, Mike Sullivan, both of whom have received permission from the Lightning to interview. Snow still is waiting for approval to interview former Atlanta coach Bob Hartley and current Providence Bruins coach Scott Gordon in Boston’s organization.

Former Colorado coach Joel Quenneville is a free agent who requires no approval from his former team. Snow said he also told current Islanders assistant Gerard Gallant, who previously coached Columbus, that he will have a chance to interview for the top job sometime in the next two weeks.

What a terrible idea. If Ted Nolan was fired because he wanted more veterans and free agents brought in, what will Paul Maurice bring to the organization? At least two of the coaches on the schedule to be interviewed (Tortorella and Gordon) are better than Maurice from the giddy-up, and you might be able to make an argument for Sullivan as well.

Snow said that he’d “be crazy not to” interview all these people, but he’d be crazy to hire half these guys too. Frankly, Tortorella is the clear choice here. He can win (see: 2004) and he has the type of attitude that would attract the New York media’s attention away from the Rangers even if the Islanders suck.

But knowing Garth Snow, I’m surprised DiPietro isn’t interviewing for a Reg Dunlop-type “player-coach” position.