Islander/NHL Notables

New York Islander Fan Central | 8/20/2008 06:27:00 AM | | | | | | | | | |






















The News Pictou County: Has an uncredited article on Saturday's second annual Play the Pros event will take place at the John Brother MacDonald Stadium in New Glasgow which was started last year by Jon Sim and Colin White of the Devils. Jon Sim comments, Joey MacDonald will participate.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
What's fun about an article like this is last year's photo has Jon Sim wearing the Islanders 2006-07 jersey before the Reebok edge designed was released, Sim never wore that jersey playing in New York.

I referenced this information a few weeks ago and Bruno Gervais should also be one of the players participating.

I found it very interesting Ross McKeon of Yahoo Sports did an article about teams contracting here in a feature about things he would change around the NHL. Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis in his blog fired back with a strong response here as to why it's not feasible with a few choice words for the Yahoo sports senior writer who in turn responded to Mr Leonsis here and of course started by writing about page views.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
Whatever happened to the good old player feature stories?

Is it really about page views for so many of these sites and revenue from their advertisers so they throw anything against the wall hoping it sticks and stirs up angry/passionate reaction? I was kind of offended Ross McKeon started his response to the Caps owner with that. It's just another reason I'm conservative with what I post here and I try and draw my own line between professional and amateur but I have included Mr McKeon's team ranking and work because clearly he is a professional and will be part of our blogs coverage regardless of content.

As for the article Mr Leonsis points out the almost countless reasons contraction is not feasible and it's impossible to argue his reasoning. I could sit here and make a case for the contraction of all thirty teams in this league at one time or another including all three New York area teams.

The team that won the Stanley Cup last year used to give away cars to get people to attend games when the New York Islanders owned this league, the Wings had problems selling out playoff games the last few years and play in one of the oldest building with the least revenue streams with it's management claiming it needed to make the finals to break even in past seasons with Wings president Jimmy Devellano's comments here about the situation in Detroit here during the lockout era.

Absolutely no club in this league is immune to being included in contraction discussion for folks who wish to start them and for me anyone who wants to start one of those discussions should include his/her favorite team first.

Congratulations to former Islander Gord Dineen who was named head coach of the Iowa Chops with the Desmiones Register doing a feature by Lisa Colonno
here.

Canadian Press here has an updated on the situation with forward Alexander Radulov with comments from Bill Daly from the NHL and KHL President Alexander Medvedev.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
Good for the NHL turning down any compensation for Alexander Radulov, he signed a contract to play here, he should honor it and play here. If he signed his contract first in Russia first he should play there and honor that deal.

What Rudulov pulled on the Predators here is flat out bush league, you sign a contract you honor it, you don't decide to sign another one and leave for more money.

KHL president Alexander Medvedev says there no mechanism in the KHL rules to force Radulov's return to the NHL, and said the matter might have to be resolved in court is all well and good but if he was really interested in doing things properly he would be just as quick to blast Radulov and suspend him from playing in his league until he completes his obligation to Nashville as he is to threaten NHL players that they could be suspended from international competition. I know it's fashionable to pile on Gary Bettman and Bill Daly here but in this case it's not fair.

Calgary Herald/Several outlets: Bruce Dowbiggin has more on the Todd Bertuzzi-Marc Crawford-Steve Moore lawsuit from the incident years ago with Crawford now telling his side of what happened in court documents.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
I would not want this hanging over my new coach as training camp is about to begin if Crawford was in any serious consideration if I were Garth Snow. Islanders coaching job is hard enough without that to work with as a sidebar. I wonder if it was a factor for Dean Lombardi combined with a losing record as this finally made it's way into the court system the last few months and received more publicity?

Hard to believe this is the same Todd Bertuzzi who was roughed up as an Islander rookie over a decade ago.