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Someone has to remind folks you only have six spots for your top two lines.
John Tavares, Josh Bailey, Kyle Okposo and if he stays Nino Niederreiter make as much money as the CBA allows them to be paid with bonus money. Trent Hunter is on a five year contract.
Rob Schremp on paper is the second line center, and his production supports that kind of spot. After the season do you dump him or Blake Comeau because you need a higher paid veteran winger because your payroll is too low?
Charles Wang did spend plenty of money and his team qualified for four playoffs in six years before becoming the NHL's poster-team for man games lost to injury, acceptable results? No, but hardly a management that should ever be portrayed as poor or not trying to win.
It's kind of on the same level reading from some of these experts how Garth Snow is building like Chicago and Pittsburgh now.
Really?
So Garth Snow bought half the league like Craig Patrick a few years ago to finish in the basement after Crosby lottery before he was fired, or Snow should have paid Campbell, Huet/Hossa huge money and fired his coach after four games and the gm should have forgotten to submit his qualifying offers in time?
These are also the Hawks that lost 30m per their ownership after winning the Stanley Cup here.
Should this have been Garth Snow's blueprint because I must have missed it, either that or when you win the Stanley Cup, no one remembers what actually happened?
Folks want to write Garth Snow never should have given Moulson a shot at an NHL spot, fair enough. I was one to write they should move on from Doug Weight and added/traded for a scoring winger.
Guess what? Snow/staff made right call on Moulson regardless what the payroll turns out to be, and it's looking good on Weight/Parenteau early.
Not like Simon Gagne with no points/minus eight is off to the same start as PA Parenteau statistically with a far better offensive supporting cast on paper.
Hard to argue with adding someone with Michael Grabner's talents which are painfully lacking on this roster in speed/hands department. It's easy to argue with Trevor Gillies getting a very expensive seat to barely play or mix and match three lines.
Bottom line it's a long-season, but how much money you spend is not the answer sometimes. Management has proven so far the players it has targeted can help this organization, they are playing acceptable enough to accumulate points.
Long term Wang/Snow's payroll test will be re-signing Moulson, Wisniewski, Parenteau, Comeau and Schremp, their biggest problem will be in finding a way to fit Bailey, Okposo, Tavares into their budget.
If they reached out to Kovalchuk over the summer and made an inquiry, fair enough, obviously they were patient enough to identify players who apparently fit what management is trying to do. I felt they should have kept reaching out, so far the results suggest management knew better.
PA Parenteau is not the NHL's best kept secret, he's not a franchise superstar, but if this waiver-wire player becomes a fifty point winger here, he was the right decision regardless of the teams current payroll. Jussi Jokinen was passed on waivers by Snow/NHL, he went to Carolina and became a thirty goal player.
I watched the NHL market this summer as did everyone, what franchise offensive talent was available beyond Kovalchuk? You wanted a Simon Gagne trade fair enough, but asking the Flyers to trade in division is not their first choice of a salary dump.
You wanted Frolov, Torres, Nystrom over some of the players here now? Fair points.
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NHL/Islander Notables:
The loss of Andrew MacDonald is huge to this team's defense, the closest player they had to Mark Streit in terms of a two-way game. Obviously the club was not happy in practices/scrimmages with play of Jack Hillen which substituted for teams preseason schedule or Mike Mottau would not be here with a two year contract.
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My guess is I don't have a clue if Nino Niederreiter is going back to Portland. If I had to speculate I would say no based on Bailey-Tavares, but Matt Martin was not on rookie/Bridgeport camp list before his injury, neither was Jesse Joensuu.
I would send him back, put Matt Martin in Gillies spot, and callup Joensuu. Bottom line is at some point Kyle Okposo will return. You don't put Niederreiter on your fourth line and demote Sim.
Bailey, Tavares, Nielsen, Comeau and top forwards must stay healthy.
Sure Niederreiter has looked good enough to stay also with his overall play.
The bonus points and play of Doug Weight cannot be counted on long-term, the stats and age do not lie as fantastic as he has played.
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Tavares was never this dominating in front of goal as he was against Florida a year ago, the first/third goals were excellent signs, but he is still a very young player who should have no expectations of thirty goals placed on him, even if he reaches that number or greater.
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If they play in spurts like they did against Toronto, Tampa, Florida, they will be in a regulation losing streak soon. Games cannot come down to Roloson or DiPietro stealing points. Florida never played the Islanders in Sunrise, as poorly as they did on Saturday and still had four goals. DiPietro was not great, but the mistakes in front of him were not good either.
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Beating Habs is no major accomplishment, not late last year or now, but I would like a sixty minute game and a win Wednesday after Mike Cammalleri, cheap shots from Canadian media over split-squad roster.
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Always nice to see the Devils receive some coverage. Kovalchuk could score 100 goals and would not receive the coverage he got for one benching. I seem to write this every year around now, when the Devils are in first place will anyone remember? When they finally lose for a full year, things have changed, not before.
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If I'm going to be critical of Msg for not showing Torrey ceremony, the Islanders website did a pathetic job not recognizing Bill Torrey with a tribute. We don't need Gillies-Konopka features, as much as we do need people like Mr Torrey to be honored long and loud.
This was a website staff that was giving us non-stop updates on Sopel-Asham last June as they played in finals.
The twitter box will be up Wednesday afternoon.
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