Back on August 2nd, I did a blog on the trends of second year coaches for the Islanders in recent history going back as far as Butch Goring here and felt then Ted Nolan regardless of results is part of the long-term answer for the Islanders.
It's a fair point to make right now this club could finish worse than Brad Shaw's Islanders given the apparent lack of scoring.
We can all do our share of second-guessing and wonder why some things are done a certain way and sure we can question performance that has not been very good but there is no doubt the respect this team has for it's head coach. Bill Guerin talked how the coach has been a calming influence recently in an interview.
I still feel exactly the same way today as I did back in August. Ted Nolan is part of the long-term answer here regardless of the final record.
Having written that will owner Charles Wang decide to make a change as was done with Peter Laviolette and Steve Stirling during or after their second seasons or will he decided to bring back the coach?
It was this staff with Ted Nolan a part of it that decided to buyout out Alexei Yashin and not bring back Jason Blake, Tom Poti, Viktor Kozlov or Richard Zednik and the players targeted by the hockey committee for most of the season have not produced enough overall to merit brining them here. Granted those players for the most part have been as inconsistent as the players who have taken their spot and it's fair to ask what would have been different here?
Will Nolan's return as coach make it any easier to convince Mike Comrie, Ruslan Fedotenko, Josef Vasicek, Trent Hunter or Miroslav Satan to resign at a reasonable price if they want a core of players to have in place come July?
There is no active coach in this league right now I think gives the Islanders a better chance to turn this around and get back in playoff position and even though he did not use injuries or illness as excuses this team without Campoli, Sillinger and Satan likely to join them he is facing the biggest coaching adversity of his professional hockey career.
My vote for what it's worth is to bring back Ted Nolan as this teams head coach next season regardless of what happens on the ice. I see him as part of the long-term solution.