The Rebuild isn't over until we have a long-term, consistent solution at the most important position in the game, GOALIE!
Progression of the rebuild
- Thread starter Jester9881
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OlTimeHockey
Registered User
Logically speaking, if Nino is already a first line winger, why isn't Poulin or Koskinen a Vezina finalist?
Problem solved, Islander style!
Quicklime
Registered User
Logically speaking, if Nino is already a first line winger, why isn't Poulin or Koskinen a Vezina finalist?
Problem solved, Islander style!
I have two problems with the goalie situation.....any other franchise would have a long-term contingency plan in hand already. It remains to be seen whether or not they try to trot Ricky back out prematurely or bet on Nabokov and/or Thomas coming back. If they start seasoning Poulin a bit more, I may not mind another year of Nabby, but I simply want a known quantity with less maybes attached to it.
Their approach to this shows how serious they are, in my opinion. No one should be sold on a ready DiPietro until he shows durability. (I'd rather see part of next season used in the AHL as well, but that's just me.) They need to give Poulin a chance at some point, not just to get him settled in better, but also because they're going to kill Nabokov.
It's as if they screw up early in the game and either JT powers them out of it or they lose, or they come out strong, get a few bounces and get a lead and then fall apart.....the whole team, like Poulin, needs to get a grip on the consistent side of the game, where it goes back to the mental aspects and coaching.
As far as "The Rebuild" is concerned, I'd rather see this roster under Ted Nolan. For the longest time I gave Capuano a chance, but they need a better coach to power through the next step - sustained, consistent hockey, high accountability, smart utilization of ice time and line changes, and most importantly, no excuses. Doug Weight is an unknown quantity. They need someone from the outside. If only they hadn't burned bridges with Brad Shaw....lol
Oh, you must be one of those fans that wants a quick fix. You would be happy with signing a ton of aging FA's (that aren't coming here anyway) so we can finish 8th and get swept every year.
Personally, I'm tired of that.... I'll wait and suffer through a proper rebuild so I don't have to suffer through that, or missing the playoffs 6 straight, ever again. That's just me though
redbull
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- Mar 24, 2008
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how long is a "proper rebuild" in your opinion?
Is Columbus almost done? Florida? Winnipeg/Atlanta?
and what did Philly do? did they rebuild in what, two years?
we have to get past the idea that a lottery pick (or FIVE in a row) is a "rebuild strategy" If the goal is to tank, then tank like the Oilers and get three first overalls! But I suggest that "rebuild" is still going on - right?
This is NOT a rebuild on Long Island. It's cost containment.
The result of this plan WILL BE a lot of young prospects, it's inevitable. It's the result of perpetual failure. But I'd take 8th place 100 times out of 100, compared to another lottery pick.
Sidney the Kidney
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Proper rebuilds supplement their young rosters with good veterans, though. Teams that are often referenced as success stories by building through the draft such as LA, Chicago, Pittsburgh, etc. all added veterans to their young core along the way. Teams that failed at the rebuild, such as Florida and Columbus, didn't do a good job of supplementing their young cores with talented veterans.
Especially after they drafted their franchise player. How long after drafting Kane/Toews did Chicago take to become a 100 point team? How long after drafting Crosby did it take the Pens? This is Tavares' 4th season, and the Isles still are a long way away from being a threat in the East.
The Islanders are currently tied for 9th in the East, with a respectable winning percentage. How much better would they be if they'd brought in even just 2 or 3 veterans still in their prime? And it wouldn't be at the cost of the Isles future, because you'd be replacing guys like Reasoner, Carkner, and Aucoin, and bumping guys like Nielsen, Okposo and Bailey down to a more natural position. It's not like bringing in a top 4 defender would mean sitting Hamonic. He's not the guy who would be in the press box.
If you truly believe in Snow's vision, that's one thing. But if you think what Snow is doing has any similarities to how the rebuilds in Chicago, Pittsburgh, or Los Angeles went, and thus he's rebuilding the "proper way", I think that's very inaccurate. Because he's not supplementing his young core like those teams did.
Doshell Propivo
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Quicklime
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That argument does have some validity to it. Each of Milbury's teams were piecemeal teams. Funny how they seem to catch lightning in a bottle one season before either losing personnel or self-destructing the next. The Isles aren't the only example - look at Florida now.
The team DOES need FA's/the right veteran help, which just drags the argument of where the Isles fail right back into the light. A team can't do it with all kids, and the NYI have several good kids. They need to make a hockey trade, and can't because of some combination of reputation and internal cap.
This would be the year to attempt a "Ryan Smyth" trade, preferably for a player of such a stature who is not an impending UFA.
And this is the crux as to why what's going on on Long Island is little more than, well, a joke from a serious hockey standpoint.
Admittedly, there are these moves every now and again like the Wisniewski trade, grabbing Nabby (then resigning Nabby), trading for the rights to Erhoff, picking up Visnovsky and a few other things along the way that make you wonder (reported attempts to sign guys like Kovalchuk or Hamhuis), but attempts to win in a manner congruent to other more successful team constructions just simply haven't been taken.
You are dead on accurate and are saying what some of us have been saying in here for a while.
I would also add that Chicago had three franchise players in Duncan, Kane, and 'Toews land in their lap at almost the same time, along with several non franchise yet high, high end players like Seabrook and Buffy. We had precisely 1 franchise player in John and one very high end possible franchise defense an in Hamonic. We have two giant question marks in Reinhart and Strome, and then nhat is it. I will include Nino when he decides to play a whole season with us half way decently.
We have had a series of disappointing prospects not pan so far, and that is a concern that lands in Garth's lap. No support at all from vets due to ownership handcuffs just makes it all the more sad.
No way to know for sure? Who is puffing now? If you remove him from the lineup the past few seasons and most of his points you have last place, and a few record bad years.
On a depth level yes. But in terms of high end franchise possible prospects, no. I will elaborate later today. I look forward to you telling me how many high end prospects you think we have.
redbull
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OlTimeHockey
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A "proper" rebuild loses some kids to get veterans who can make the remaining kids better.....the WHOLE of the team is being made better, not individual prospects and kids.
If trading Grabner gets us a solid defenseman, it helps Tavares, Reinhart, Hamonic, Strome, you name it. The better the hockey game we play, the better the rebuild goes.
This idea that we can rely on the kids and their development and not do the legwork of acquiring prime talent or Westfallesque veterans who can help JT and others learn how to WIN.....it's Islander madness.
Our rebuild is taking longer than any other club because we're refusing to do it right.
Would you cut bait on Okposo and send, say, a Grabner {naming a good player arbitrarily}to a team to get a Michael Peca or Kenny Jonsson asset back to make the team better? I sure as **** would.
OlTimeHockey
Registered User
To continue, there is depth in the prospect pool which will eventually pan into greater depth than those older rosters in the mid 2000s, but curently, today, this club sucks. The good players we have outside of Tavares, Hamonic, and Martin all come with significant flaws. Nielsen is good defensively, is poor offensively, has no size and it hurts against physical clubs. You could paint most of this club as a bunch of midgets against physical clubs which are pretty much automatic losses. Amac was exposed as a #4 this season. He has no business playing 20 minutes a night yet he has too because our defense sucks and has no depth to speak of. That's why we had to grab two whole top 6 players off the waiver wire. That is not a real defense. That is chicken ****. Cizikas is a solid contributor who plays 6 inches taller than he is. Grabner while being built like a girlscout and unable to handle a physical game is on track to using his speed and instincts effectively. If he ever develops a scoring game even better. Moulson scores goals. As long as he is with Tavares. He does nothing else. Streit was awful int he first half of this season like he always is. I am surprised you mention his name with a straight face. He picked up his game recently, but is still abysmal defensively.
Back to the real point:
Franchise Players: Tavares
Real top pair defensemen/1st line forwards: Hamonic
The rest fall in beneath and in some cases are maddeningly unproductive or inconsistent. Strome Reinhart and Nino offer good promise but the only one who shows real promise for greatness is Strome.
So yes, good depth, but the high end prospect pool is inadequate for a club that has sucked so bad for so long.
Honestly, on a real good team Harmonic is not a top pairing defenseman but on the Islanders he has to be.
I agree, though I think he is eventually a solid top pair defenseman. We don't have a real top pairing at the moment.
OlTimeHockey
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Sidney the Kidney
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Since a lot of the discussion thus far has been more about opinions on where the rebuild should be, I thought I'd do things a bit differently and try and provide a ... numerical ... comparison for various rebuilds compared to the Isles.
Essentially, below will be the usual suspects that the Isles rebuild is being compared to favorably, along with the age of their "core" at the time when the team began to make some noise (not necessarily just when they won the Cup, but when they'd established themselves as a legitimate threat) who remained when they eventually won the Cup.
Los Angeles Kings
From 2006 to 2009, they missed the playoffs 3 years in a row, and were below .500 each of those years. The 2009-10 season was therefore the first year they started to establish themselves as a potential threat in the Western Conference.
So looking at the 2009-10 roster, the age of the core players at the start of the season:
Kopitar - 22
Doughty - 20
Brown - 25
Williams - 28
Stoll - 27
Quick - 23
Of note, they also had Jack Johnson (22 years old) and Wayne Simmonds (21 years old) playing big parts for that team. Simmonds and Johnson weren't on the Cup winning team, but were big pieces in landing two key components of that Cup win in Richards and Carter.
Chicago Blackhawks
Thanks to old man Wirtz, Chicago was a pretty bad team for a long time before the 2005 lockout. With his passing, the team started to focus on winning again. They made strides in the 2007-08 season, finishing with 88 points. But they didn't yet crack the top-8. It was in 2008-09 that they made their mark, and haven't looked back since.
The age of their core guys at the beginning of the 2008-09 season:
Kane - 20
Toews - 20
Sharp - 27
Bolland - 22
Keith - 25
Seabrook - 23
Obviously, their Cup win also included strong performances from players like Hossa, Versteeg, Byfuglien, and Campbell. But I concentrated on the guys who they were building around, and who have been there since they started to trend upward and continue to be there now.
Pittsburgh Penguins
Much like the Islanders, the Pens' pre-lockout future looked bleak. Ownership was losing money, bankruptcy was looming, no new arena was planned, and so the club was selling off its players and basically forced into icing a roster as cheap as possible. Then the 2005 draft happened.
Since that time, the Pens have only missed the playoffs once. So for this discussion's sake, I'm going to use the 2006-07 season as the reference point because that was the first season post-Crosby draft when they were legitimate contenders (105 point season).
Core player ages of the Pens roster at the start of the 2006-07 season:
Crosby - 19
Malkin - 20
Staal - 18
Letang - 19
Orpik - 26
Fleury - 22
They also had Ryan Whitney (23 years old), who would later be flipped for Chris Kunitz, and of course Sergei Gonchar (32 years old) who was a tremendous help leading up to their Cup win in 2009.
New York Islanders
Their core, the guys you'd expect to build around, at the start of the 2013 season (lockout means season didn't start until this calendar year):
Tavares - 22
Okposo - 24
Grabner - 25
Bailey - 23
Moulson - 29
Hamonic - 22
Macdonald - 26
-----
The point I'm making by listing the ages of these players? The core ages of those teams isn't much older than the core ages of the Islanders' players this season. In some cases, the core ages (Penguins had a lot of 19 and 20 year old core guys their first 100-point season) of those teams is *younger* than the Isles' core this year.
So it's not age or experience that's the difference between those teams and this year's Isles' team, it's how those team's managements brought in good veterans to compliment the abilities of their core guys, while the Isles' management has failed (for the most part) to do that.
Essentially, below will be the usual suspects that the Isles rebuild is being compared to favorably, along with the age of their "core" at the time when the team began to make some noise (not necessarily just when they won the Cup, but when they'd established themselves as a legitimate threat) who remained when they eventually won the Cup.
Los Angeles Kings
From 2006 to 2009, they missed the playoffs 3 years in a row, and were below .500 each of those years. The 2009-10 season was therefore the first year they started to establish themselves as a potential threat in the Western Conference.
So looking at the 2009-10 roster, the age of the core players at the start of the season:
Kopitar - 22
Doughty - 20
Brown - 25
Williams - 28
Stoll - 27
Quick - 23
Of note, they also had Jack Johnson (22 years old) and Wayne Simmonds (21 years old) playing big parts for that team. Simmonds and Johnson weren't on the Cup winning team, but were big pieces in landing two key components of that Cup win in Richards and Carter.
Chicago Blackhawks
Thanks to old man Wirtz, Chicago was a pretty bad team for a long time before the 2005 lockout. With his passing, the team started to focus on winning again. They made strides in the 2007-08 season, finishing with 88 points. But they didn't yet crack the top-8. It was in 2008-09 that they made their mark, and haven't looked back since.
The age of their core guys at the beginning of the 2008-09 season:
Kane - 20
Toews - 20
Sharp - 27
Bolland - 22
Keith - 25
Seabrook - 23
Obviously, their Cup win also included strong performances from players like Hossa, Versteeg, Byfuglien, and Campbell. But I concentrated on the guys who they were building around, and who have been there since they started to trend upward and continue to be there now.
Pittsburgh Penguins
Much like the Islanders, the Pens' pre-lockout future looked bleak. Ownership was losing money, bankruptcy was looming, no new arena was planned, and so the club was selling off its players and basically forced into icing a roster as cheap as possible. Then the 2005 draft happened.
Since that time, the Pens have only missed the playoffs once. So for this discussion's sake, I'm going to use the 2006-07 season as the reference point because that was the first season post-Crosby draft when they were legitimate contenders (105 point season).
Core player ages of the Pens roster at the start of the 2006-07 season:
Crosby - 19
Malkin - 20
Staal - 18
Letang - 19
Orpik - 26
Fleury - 22
They also had Ryan Whitney (23 years old), who would later be flipped for Chris Kunitz, and of course Sergei Gonchar (32 years old) who was a tremendous help leading up to their Cup win in 2009.
New York Islanders
Their core, the guys you'd expect to build around, at the start of the 2013 season (lockout means season didn't start until this calendar year):
Tavares - 22
Okposo - 24
Grabner - 25
Bailey - 23
Moulson - 29
Hamonic - 22
Macdonald - 26
-----
The point I'm making by listing the ages of these players? The core ages of those teams isn't much older than the core ages of the Islanders' players this season. In some cases, the core ages (Penguins had a lot of 19 and 20 year old core guys their first 100-point season) of those teams is *younger* than the Isles' core this year.
So it's not age or experience that's the difference between those teams and this year's Isles' team, it's how those team's managements brought in good veterans to compliment the abilities of their core guys, while the Isles' management has failed (for the most part) to do that.
OlTimeHockey
Registered User
Exactly. You don't send some raw PFC Marines out without a good general, a series of qualified Lieutenants and Sergeants and the best training combined. Just like you don't throw rookies like Bailey out there with no help.
Nino sure could have used a Doug Weight or Bill Guerin on his line {the third or fourth}. As could Josh Bailey {on the second line}.
So.....Boyes is the best we could do, I guess. Not bad, but nothing special, just a point producer. An older Guerin would have been far superior.
*MIND YOU* we could get real talent in a bizarro universe where Charles B.Wurtz didn't own our team.
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