Folks, let's be clear because the one thing that is not done here is entries written with amnesia. All of last season I wrote about how poorly this team played, & were badly outplayed in many games.
I saw no path to a team struggling & winning ugly almost never playing home for a month with no days off, and qualifying for the playoffs vs all the teams in division with a reasonable schedule.
Some will recall me posting the March schedules of all the other teams, and doing a comparison.
I believe the schedule is far worse than last year for the New York Islanders.
*******************************************#NYI #isles 22 of last 34 on road + 9 game road trip in condensed schedule. No NHL team comes close to that disadvantage.— NYI Fan Central (@nyifancentral) October 9, 2016
The amateur bloggers, pod-casters are selling their business/themselves, resume building & rare part-time professional media have to claim they are covering our team, which they don't.
Waste of time, nothing I can write, not written before that's new beyond Mayfield can come up without waivers, the prospects left will likely go back to juniors, and we'll see who goes back to Bridgeport between Pelech/Pulock or both before the injuries hit.
Have already written plenty about outgoing/incoming/developing players.
I will do a brief entry when teams final roster comes out on Monday-Tuesday.
Then they will go play games, and we will find out. Could finish anywhere between 1-15, and you can write that about almost every team given many have been rebuilding for years.
Some players will improve, others will regress, there will be the usual share of injuries, and the nine-game road trip in a short-schedule will be a big problem other teams will not face.
Funny, when the Islanders were having all those second half's of seasons where they had the second best record in East or finishing 17-5-2 on road, Scott Burnside, was not calling for a huge standings improvement.
A lot of this junk, even at the professional level, is about personal connections between media/team officials or flat out selling teams they need to market their newspaper/outlet.
Our team does not have that problem with no home media. Out of 30 NHL teams, they come in 30th every year in that department.