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Just would like to remind our readers, the 2010-11, New York Islanders started out 4-1-2 in first place, despite Scott Gordon's very justified concerns. The usual media people, who cannot even properly cover the teams on their own beat, as always, came off clueless.
All most see is the scoreboard. If a team bounces in five goals and wins, it's considered a gritty effort.
My point is, like all seasons, as coaches often say, it has to be broken into segments. As long as this group comes out of the preseason healthy, with no painfully obvious weakness (like going five games with no goals at all) it's basically meaningless until we learn more.
Remember Steve Stirling's 7-0 preseason in 03-04, what happened opening night?
The rest is an off-topic mailbag that may be boring to some.
Mailbag Unplugged:
I get asked this question often, why do I simply have no respect for message boards and practically all fan bloggers?
Simply put, I have no personal dislike for anyone, but frankly I have read virtually nothing that is not someone's self-serving attempt to market themselves as some kind of necessary resource that our fans need, spare us.
Truth is, I find it personally offensive, our die-hard fans who just want a fair viewpoint based on games or comments do not receive it from most.
Most of what I read is not only unfair, and wrong, it's lazy. That should offend anyone knowledgeable.
NYIFC was started to help our fans, not to make some sad attempt as most others do for some kind of gain or recognition. I play it as straight as possible with our views, I call out what's unfair by professionals, not fans who insult our intelligence who will write anything to gain a page view or those who think they are selling themselves.
Please, never consider NYIFC or any amateur fan blog as professional, and do not take what some professional writer presents as gospel. How much misinformation can one digest?
As a former moderator of what used to be a great message board, that fell off the map entirely in terms of credible information or discussion (I still get e-mails on that disaster of a forum run by my ten replacement moderators) I find nothing of value on the message boards I have seen. All of them are frankly a joke, with a lot of people who want to be moderators, or lecture the masses, or present an agenda of dislike about some items that have nothing to do with credible, reported facts and quotes.
You believe moderators want to kick out the people who ruin every thread when doing that could cost them a promotion? Those folks want to win that popularity contest, a lot more than they care about a quality forum.
One or two nice individuals, but overall entirely worthless.
What I learned over the years (some of this goes back a decade) is all of them have owners with their hands out, who will do anything to benefit themselves, nothing else. Somewhere many went from being fans to seeing an opportunity to make a niche and play insider that they will write anything to bring attention.
I guess if you need to read people spewing garbage with a lot of mods, who want to be popular or boards owners who want ad dollars, it's good for them, not good for you.
Don't waste your time, it's an outdated model.
This blog is cutting down this season significantly, but at least if you do take your valuable time here, I promise to give you an honest viewpoint based on how the team plays and what the players actually say when there are updates.
You wish to send me e-mails that Charles Wang is a bad hockey owner because his team has not won enough, fair enough. Do not waste time telling me what he does behind closed doors because that we do not know.
It's like all these bloggers who read one poorly written article with misinformation and distort it in so many different directions, that nothing is correct. You get some folks who tell us the Islanders were so far below the floor they would have to take other teams failures?
Guess not.
Are those the same individuals who have no answers why 4.5m in Roloson and Wisniewski last December were shipped out with no NHL replacement, and this team somehow did not violate rules on the cap floor or selectively ignore Charles Wang's pre-lockout payrolls with no cap floor were over forty million dollars?
Call it what you want, but somewhere along the way, you are entitled to a fair accounting of what's actually transpired.
The misinformation leads to e-mails like I got recently that the Islanders should not be on television during pre-season because they have terrible ratings.
Sounds nice, reads well, but if I hid twenty plus games on Msg+2 of my competition and then had my media person constantly point out low ratings, and never point out what the difference is between a +2 game vs a regular channel, perhaps a few naive folks would figure out the cable contract was to hide New York Islander hockey, not make it more popular?
Some folks are so busy not paying attention (they are too busy telling me what Charles Wang is thinking?) they believe the Islanders own their telecast and have some actual control over decisions and newspaper content? What's next Steve Zipay is going to ask when is James Dolan going to do interviews like Charles Wang?
Chris Drury make more playoffs in New York than Alexei Yashin?
For that to make it in James Dolan's newspaper, the sports editor, publisher would have to sneak that through on their way to the unemployment line because it would be their farewell. If former employees outright say it, that's not fan speculation, but reported fact here here or here or here.
Between blog entries all these years, NYIFC actually did some reading, this is why when a blog was started here, we had some reported facts with quotes to back our viewpoints. It's not that tough a thing to do either, but most will have no memory of what they write from week to week. I consider that a very disrespectful approach that's disingenuous.
Arthur Staple is a huge former Ranger salesman, he'll keep an underlying negative theme in virtually every article he can on the New York Islanders. DiPietro had a few words the other day according to Staple? He ignored the five pages he gave the Post. Of course Newsday makes Charles Wang, reality television, you think they are going to do that with the owner of Newsday and their two teams that are on par with the New York Islanders or worse in the last decade?
Some of you asked questions, I took a quiet period to answer.