Garth Snow announced the signing of prospect Robin Figren Wednesday on ITV to a three year contract.
Sound Tigers.com: Has Garth Snow's comments on the signing that he will spend the 2008-09 season with Djurgardens of the Swedish Elite League before returning to North American to complete the last two years of the contract. Assistant General Manager and Director of Amateur Scouting Ryan Jankowski also comment.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Only Kim Johansson and Stefan Ridderwall left to be signed by June 1st.
That's a huge signing for this club and a skill player to go with Joensuu & Marcinko who are now in the mix with Hennigar and Hillen. It's disappointing he's going back to the Elite league for a year as opposed to the AHL.
Islanders website: Has a release with Mike Sillinger appearing on TV55 tonight around 11:20pm for an interview with C.J Papa.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Bergenheim's WC game with Finland Wednesday will be updated in this thread later today or early tomorrow. Check WC links on sidebar here for reports on the game.
Updated:
Finland moves to 3-0 at the WC with a 3-2 against Slovakia Wednesday. Sean Bergenheim played a little over six minutes with a minus one rating and no shots on goal.
Newsday: Greg Logan blogged again and wrote about Mr Botta's value to the Islanders, what a great job he did and how much he will be missed by the paper and the organization after he again basically put the blame all on Chris Dey but had no details other than his own opinion/speculation.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Yesterday Mr Logan makes his point to remind everyone Chris Dey is Mr Wang's son in law, today he's telling us his relationship to Mr Wang is irrelevant? When he makes up his mind could he keep it to himself now that he has done all he can to stir up everyone against Mr Dey to where he will never be given a fair chance. He just did a wonderful job turning Chris Dey into David Seldin.
I was preparing a blog on all this which I was going to release in a few days but where was Greg Logan when this team honored Mr Botta back in December, how come during the all-star break he did not blog while Mr Botta was in Atlanta doing interviews for our fans, including one with him as his blog sat empty while a New York Islander started the all-star game?
On one hand Mr Logan writes it's a classic case of philosophical differences and on the other tells us he cannot tell us what they were because he's not privy to details of the Monday morning meeting between Mr Dey/Mr Botta so why don't he give it a rest, stop stirring things up with gossip and respect Mr Botta's decision?
Mr Logan even tells his readers Mr Botta was charmed by Mike Milbury at a time he was not the beatwriter here. All I know in that regard is he stood up for Mike Milbury when Alan Hahn was unfair in his coverage and not only ripped Mr Hahn but Newsday's coverage of our team that season and he was correct in my estimation.
There have been a lot of fair reasons to question Newsday and Mr Logan for a lot of things this season in their coverage and content.
It's also nice of Mr Logan to remind us the newspaper market has changed in the past decade and that NHL coverage has suffered terribly but when he's outblogged in the only paper that covers this club five to one and half the time he cannot stop talking about the bad times how is that helping? He makes no effort to hype up Martinek or anyone who does a good job here or the club when it plays well, more often than not he's talking about the club's viability because he cannot be bothered hyping them like other newspapers do for their teams.
Don't kid yourselves folks, Steve Zipay, Arthur Staple and Mark Herrmann at times were doing cartwheels to hype the Rangers and protect them the last week. The Isles played Buffalo as evenly as the Rangers played Pittsburgh a year ago, lost in five and Mr Logan did no such cartwheels to hype our team at that time as they were in five close games also that were one goal contest or decided by reviews aside from game one.
Mr Logan goes on vacation and Katie Strang does more blogs in the off season than he does during the season?
No folks, I'm tired of reading the defense he writes longer blogs. He cannot even be honest enough with his readers in his profile to tell Islander fans he's a long-time Ranger beatwriter. Time to drop the pretense.
As for Mr Logan's assertion the blog box has definitely generated increased attention for the Islanders how could he know this? Is he checking our blogs to see the hit counts or how many responses we all receive or my e-mail box? Or is he talking about Jim Baumbach coming at the trade deadline one time to watch bloggers reactions as opposed to having a second writer give this team more coverage that it desperately needs.
Mr Logan does not even build up the Isles page at Newsday to include media blogs or major hockey websites as Mr Zipay did for his readers. Even Alan Hahn did an occasional mailbag in the paper and went on television for pregames and talked Islanders.
Meanwhile what good is having a beatwriter with so much comp time he's gone for close to two months of a six month hockey season and the most passionate things he wrote was to rip Chris Simon and complain about his trip from Colorado to Edmonton until he started in on DiPietro/Nolan's contract and all these so-called rifts?
I can appreciate Mr Logan's loyalty to Mr Botta, I feel likewise and no doubt many fans will feel the impact of his leaving because he was that good in his work and his dedication to the Islanders. But most of Mr Logan's content just comes off as a man who wants to stir things up first and foremost and that's not right or fair.
I'll release my blog with more of this in a few days. I wanted to let things settle down out of respect to Mr Botta who would be the last one to want any of this.
Chris Botta will be missed, he does not need to leave with the beatwriter turning it into a circus but obviously it already has and that's also unfortunate.
THN.com: Adam Proteau also had a few words of well-deserved praise for Mr Botta.
THN.com: Ryan Kennedy has Kyle Okposo as his number one hit list graduates in a quick sentence.