There are also thousands of nameless wonders like Ness, Wishart, Flood, Keith Aulie that kick around and then fade away. It's not easy to tell the difference.
Isles fans - all fan bases - fall in love at the draft, the next few years, then want to dump them when they get hurt (deHaan) or have growing pains (Donovan) because they are "holding back" the next teen phenom.
And so it goes.
True enough, but what does that have to do with what I said? All I was trying to do was make the point that its a ridiculous statement to scoff at the notion of a player actually needing 2 or 3 years of AHL experience and assuming that player is automatically an AHL journeyman.
Islander fans specifically have had good reason to fall in love at the draft in recent years. At least with the first round picks. It's been a long time since they have done this well in the first round for lets say 6 consecutive years. (MDC, JHS, Pulock, Reinhart, Strome, Nelson, Nino, Tavares and de Haan).
Most of those were premium picks, I'll grant you. And a lot remains to be determined with a lot of the more recent draft picks but I can tell you they have now put together quite an impressive record of at least 1st round picks. I actually didn't like the Reinhart, Nino, de Haan selections at the time (obviously I was wrong with 2 of them
).
So I guess my point is, I don't begrudge Islander fans for blindly liking what the Islanders do at the draft, at least not at this point. Snow and company has instilled some trust in the fan base for what he does at the podium on draft day. Something almost every other GM the Islanders have ever had can not say.
