Point Blank: Mr Botta checks in with a blog on several items including the coaching search and reports Mike Sullivan will interview for the Islanders head coach position on Monday and current Providence Bruins coach Scott Gordon will meet with Garth Snow on Wednesday. Marc Crawford and Gerard Gallant are expected to interview later in the week with Joel Quenneville having a day slotted at some point for an interview in the next few days.
Mr Botta has some speculation as to when a coach could be hired after second interviews.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Seems like all the big name coaches have no problem coming here to interview. I would guess all the major magazines for hockey will not even have a coach in it's Islander preview because many are written by late July/early August.
I hate to remind Mr Botta how tough it even was for Cablevision to even play fair with the Hummer challenge or he's underestimating the situation. It's been a long summer with virtually no Islanders content provided by Msg in terms of airing a game a week while the house team is on about half the day. My guess is newspaper content will be along the same lines.
I'm not going to lose sleep over it but my guess is the days of even coverage between clubs in Newsday is over which was a joke in the first place because Newsday's editor should have dumped all Ranger coverage and doubled up on the Isles.
Poll Update:
Heck of a race going on for the sixth spot between Freddy Meyer and Bruno Gervais with both players now both signed for the next two seasons. (three in Gervais case)
This club stays healthy on it's backline someone is going to be very disappointed come opening night. For those who recall last year with the light schedule after the first week everyone was healthy and three players were sitting around.
Aaron Johnson played sixty plus games with Colmubus and had to wait, Meyer waited so long he wound up on waivers while Berard and Bergeron were in and out depending on who was playing better.