Same, I thought he did everything he could given the dogwater management team in place during his time here. He had to carry a lot of bad linemates with zero depth around him, and the burden of captaincy in a Canadian market when you're constantly losing is not easy.
Hopefully the Islanders realize they need to do a complete overhaul/rebuild sooner rather than later, and use one of their retention spots to deal him to a contender. Unlikely given the length of that deal, but one can hope.
Isles went as far as they could in 2020 and 2021. I think it was the 2021 ECF where the Isles and TB went to game 7. Isles were on a PP in a scoreless game in the second half of the game or maybe it was even into the 3rd period and they gave up a shorty because they failed to pick up the trailer of the Bolts. Had 2 guys back but the backchecking forward and last guy back both took the puck carrying TB forward.
That was their best shot as they were a talent limited team, so that hard working style wasn't going to be easy to hold up over 82 games.
Since Dobson in 2018, they traded most of their firsts/seconds and the ones they kept in Holmstrom, Walstrom haven't developed. Too big a gap in terms of the talent on their roster. At best a WC team now that NJ has returned to where we expected them to be. NYR, NJ, Car the top 3 in the Metro.
Team needs a reboot with a fresh viewpoint. Of the clubs that are not bottom 5, I'd probably want them to win the lottery. If they free up some cap with nelson, palmeri and move a RHD out and even PGP, they could have a pretty big refresh for next season as they now have their UBS Arena as a selling point to free agents.