Islander News Articles 8/21

New York Islander Fan Central | 8/21/2008 06:11:00 AM | | | |
Islanders website: Has the recap of last night's RE/MAX Open House
with new head coach Scott Gordon where he took fan questions, Frans Nielsen also was part of last night's event and gave his comments.

Islanders TV: Has a fourteen minute video of last night's open house with Scott Gordon.

Islanders Television: Has Scott Gordon's fifteen minute interview on FAN960.

Newsday: Katie Strang covered last night's open house with Scott Gordon's comments again as he again talked about incorporating the teams speed into the game plan and will be calling his players over the next week to introduce himself and try to get the to buy into the clubs system and philosophy.

Newsday: Katie Strang has a blog last night on the event before above article where Mr Dey's promotion was included.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
I'm not sure what to make of this and I'll admit I completelty forgot about last night's event. A lot of what we read about Scott Gordon was he's all about defense and keeping shots against down, second time now I have read him talking about this club's speed to play more of an attacking style of game.

Ted Nolan on countless occasions talked about how his team had to play the style they did because they did not have the speed and skill of other clubs where by contrast we read alot about Ted Nolan not playing a 1-3-1 until the very end of the season against Pittsburgh. The former coach also was furious in a game against Philadelphia where they scored three rare first period goals where he felt they cheated their defensive system for offense. That was the game a few pucks hit the SMG boards and found their way in front of DiPietro on strange bounces and the Isles blew the lead and the game.

My take on this is the new coach is going to discover this is a very slow group of veteran forwards who are easy to predict and defend. Bill Guerin, Trent Hunter, Mike Sillinger and Doug Weight are hardly fast skaters.

This is a trend that has gone back several years and roster reincarnations here, Jason Blake carried the puck for everyone and got them setup in the zone.

I do not know what Scott Gordon is seeing in these tapes that I did not see last season, Ted Nolan talked about the lack of speed and skill often and that's not how this club would win games. For his thirty odd games Jeff Tambellini did not look fast, he looked tenative and uncertain.

I guess we'll see. This club was never faster than the stretch Bergenheim-Yashin-Robert Nilsson were a line in early March 2006.