Not to rain on the Islanders’ parade the way water once poured through the leaky roof at the Coliseum, but if this is a Lou Lamoriello-Barry Trotz team, now would be a pretty good time to start to show it.
Because while leaping to conclusions and underestimating the staying power of the twice-running semifinalists following an enervating 13-game tour of North America would be as foolish as trading Roberto Luongo in order to open a spot for Rick DiPietro, these guys just haven’t looked much at all like themselves this time around.
And that, as much as the burdensome schedule, is because they are not the same. Pieces are missing. And though GM Lamoriello has managed to pull off some worthy hands-of-sleight in maneuvering around the cap the past couple of seasons by getting players to stay for less just as he was able to do in New Jersey during the Triple Cup Era, the bill has come due, at least in part.
Because while ditching Jordan Eberle and Nick Leddy — imperfect players who both represented declining value in the playoffs — did necessarily free a combined $11 million of cap space, $5.5 million apiece, the Islanders are missing a couple of core players who had been essential to the team’s regular-season success.
There are players who you might not to be able to count on in the postseason but are at the same time the players who score the easy-ish goals and make the routine plays needed to get through the 82-game preliminaries.
Not to diminish either Eberle — who leads the Kraken with nine goals after being exposed and selected in the expansion draft — or Leddy —working well with Filip Hronek with the Red Wings, to whom he was dealt for Richard Panik and a second-rounder — but that’s what these players had become for the Islanders.
And the Islanders, who want to grind you down from Game 1 of the regular season but grind themselves down at the same time, need those types of players go get to the tournament even if they needed players who would give more in final-four showdowns against the Lightning (Striking Again). Cap constraints made it very difficult to do both. Catch-38 (Years).
The absence of Eberle would not be so dramatic if Kyle Palmieri, signed to a four-year deal at $5 million per this summer, were not underperforming. The winger first acquired from New Jersey preceding last year’s deadline has three goals in 30 regular-season games for the Islanders (one in 13 games this year). Eberle averaged 23 goals per 82 games in four years on the Island.
But trading Leddy created an issue I doubt even the seer Lamoriello was able to foresee. Because when replacing No. 2 on Scott Mayfield’s left with Andy Greene did not appear to work out, and when free-agent signee Zdeno Chara stumbled off the blocks, the Islanders compensated by breaking up their Adam Pelech-Ryan Pulock matchup pair in order to move Pelech onto the tandem with Mayfield and move Pulock to Chara’s right side.
Sorry, but the Pelech-Pulock was a Signature Pair every bit as much as Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck is the Identity Line. The Islanders became less than themselves in splitting them up.
Now, of course, Pulock is down for up to six weeks with an unidentified lower-body injury, so the Islanders will be even more diluted and less recognizable just as they are setting up at their new digs. It is a strange time. There is well-deserved pomp, but the on-ice circumstances are less than ideal. Cheering for a building gets old in a hurry.
The Islanders have 13 more games at home than on the road the rest of the way, 12 following Saturday’s inaugural game at Secretariat’s playground. The future, at long last, is here for the league’s one-time shipwreck franchise that was rescued by Scott Malkin, Jon Ledecky, Lamoriello and Trotz.
Now it is on the hockey team, a very different one from the three that immediately preceded it, to deliver the present. They’re home, finally home after weeks and months and years, but it is going to take a lot more than clicking their heels to get where the Islanders want — and expect — to go.
You can’t make lineup decisions based on PR or sentiment. The NHL is not a rec league. That is understood.
But there is such a thing as decency in dealing with players, and there is such a thing as cruelty, and the latter is the path that longtime good guy Rick Bowness inexplicably chose on Thursday with the Stars coach’s late scratch of rookie Riley Tufte for what would have been a homecoming game in Minnesota.
It’s not only what Bowness, whose team entered the weekend 25th overall in winning percentage, did, it’s the way he did it. It’s the way the coach explained it the next day with a collection of words that were gibberish.
It’s the way the Stars humiliated the 23-year-old, 26th-overall selection of the 2016 draft for no reason at all by scratching the winger hours before the game after misleading him that he would dress for what would have been the Coon Rapids, Minn., native’s first game home as a pro.
It’s the way the staff allowed Tufte to empty his pockets on tickets for the game. It’s the way the staff presented him to the media following the morning skate, at which time he talked about having his family and friends in the stands.
Was there a legitimate hockey reason for the late switch of fourth-liners in game the karma-crushed Stars lost 7-2?
Probably not.
More to the point, was there any reason at all to treat this young man with such disregard?
None whatsoever.
Finally, now that Tim Peel has given P.K. Subban his stamp of approval, we can all rest easier.
