NYI Fan Central Notables

First of all my Thanks once again to Alex and Steve from Hockey Night on LI for inviting me to appear on their season opening program. As always I had a great time talking New York Islander hockey with them and they do an exellent job with the program. They will be on again Saturday at 3:30pm with the second of the double-header home opening weekend.

At the time we did the show yesterday, we did not know the lineup or injury situation as even folks in the media did not know until the club took the ice.

All Hockey Night on LI programs are featured on the sidebar of NYIFC for those who could not listen live.
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My Point Blank: Mr Botta as always had a ton of upstanding updates for the opener, the weekly radio show he does at 1050Espn will be on tape delay Saturday from from 5:30 - 6:30 pm and include Islander general manager Garth Snow among the guest.
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On the blog box front to this point the club has not announced it's newest addtions to the group. I noted they took out the bloggers who decided not to return so I guess they are ready to add the new members in when they can.

Last year I was the last blog added in November and at the time I was told because of all the work behind the scenes it took a lot of time to put the blog box together so for those waiting for an answer please be a little patient.

I will add the feeders to all the new members blogs when available so you can read everyone's latest entries here. My suggestion was they add a lot of blogs because you cannot have enough hockey content, I would go at least twenty deep.
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On the poll front the basement is off to an early lead with Comeau on the sidelines making my sixth place projection not look very good. It's early and I suspect he will win over this coach but it's not the best of starts.

I understand folks have been virtually posioned by the media about this club, all I know is they were in sixth last January and made four of the last six playoffs with about as flawed a club you can have and still did not come apart until they won another six games in a row to be right there at the trade deadline.

I have seen enough Islander seasons where they were double-digit points out by thankgiving, we saw that in 05-06 by the end of the year.

Of course for those who watched the opener they saw a club that hardly looked like a fifteenth place team.
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Finally New York Islander Fan Central is making a small change of it's own that should be visible now for everyone.

We have claimed our own domain with the official name changing to
www.newyorkislanderfancentral.com

Hopefully blogger still lets folks redirect from blogspot for those who have bookmarked or link directly here but just in case I thought I would tell everyone so you know where the find us in case it does not work the same for you.

NYI Fan Central Update

A few things:

I hope folks are finding and checking out the new prospects blog that has it's link at the top of this page under New York Islander Fan Central Prospects blog.

It is not a blog I write messages in but an extension of the sidebar where you can link to a specific players website or newspaper coverage (in some cases) and see how they are doing. New York Islander Fan Central as always will have the prospect updates in the daily news articles but New York Islander Fan Central Prospect blog will have reference links added to it's blog.

Just too many links to keep all on one blog and I wanted two pages that loads as fast as possible for everyone.
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The newspaper links for Moncton/Summerside coverage are on the sidebar so days I cannot update you can find what's happening quickly. No specific feeder for this because Islanders are not just a sports story but a news story in these places and no feeder is Islander-centric.
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I'm not sure if I'm going to do a live blog during camp, a few folks have asked but I will have a few during regular season games.
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A little early for polls but as I wrote all along when I come up with a good one folks will enjoy and be challenged by I will post it. I do not subscribe to the concept of creating polls for page hits or to stir up reaction.
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I think the new redesign to the template looks excellent and will serve us well. I wanted the three column blog so things are not cluttered and tried to balance things on both sides.
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Still working on a cloud tag format but for now I set something up where you can see items with twelve entries or more if you want to search. For this year I'm going to drop putting NYI, NHL or Bridgeport, AHL in tags just as I stopped listing specific writers most of the time.

Just makes for a tag list that is simply too long.
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As I wrote last week blogger now lets you add blogs as a favorite if you choose so you do not have to link to it from other places if you care to.

As always comments, suggestions on things you would like to see here are welcome here along with your links if you would like to add your site to the sidebar here. My only criteria for this is an updated Islander blog and no profanity.

Thanks again. I cannot believe this little blog hit the sixty thousand mark the other day but just says how New York Islander hockey is a year round passion for our fans.

Summer went very quick.

A little treat for a few days only, our new dynasty header for special occasions that includes the entire core of the four.

NYI Fan Central back in Season Mode

Next week will be a very busy time so I decided to pick today to roll out the new blog redesign and put back our traditional look as opposed to the opening of camp.

Outside of a few minor tweaks this is close to the final product and like the new prospects blog I think it's something everyone will enjoy.

One of the big new changes was a triple-column blog design so more items can be featured with less clutter. Another was the return of the labels so folks can link and find information. The old setup had so many tags I could not post tags any longer because the list ran longer than the page.

A new feeder tag was also added to each post along with the book marks so many of those old subscribe widgets could be deleted.

Eventually when games begin I will add in the scoreboard.

This season there will also be more live chat blogs during some games.

Thanks again to everyone.

NYI Fan Central Update

Some changes at NYI Fan Central.

As always I'm always trying to upgrade this blog to bring more information and features to it for everyone.

I announce these changes sometimes so everyone knows where to find new features here along with things they may have been moved because some folks may may come here just to find links to other sites.

For the remainder of the summer up until training camp begins the new brighter page look will we be third jersey (home white) version of this blog.

So what's next?

* I have been bulking up sidebar with some links to some Independent Islander Fan Sites, many links are included. My requirement for listing folks here are regular hockey updates and no profanity from your site.

If interested please send an e-mail.

* We now have a Hockey Database (hockeydb.com) player finder widget from their excellent site added to the NHL Trades/Transactions/Free Agent Signings section which will now be a permanent fixture here so we can follow player transactions, not just trade deadline days or July 1st.

* Faceoff.com has a feeder of sorts showing it's latest update which is now listed below the picture link to that site.

* I found something that has an RSS feed for the Sound Tigers, the Ct Post does not have exclusive Sound Tiger rss feeds for Mr Fornabaio so where stuck and I asked him enough about that last year which is beyond his control.

* I also added back in the Sound Tigers live scoreboard widget which will have live game scores and the schedule. If AHL.com comes up with something better I'll go with that but it seems no one in North America has created anything for live game AHL updates to put on a blog, but the Utah Grizzlies are offering a toobar for computers which will not be here because it's not for blogs.

* When the Isles announce their new blog box members I will add them all to the current feeder for it regardless if I am part of the blog box moving forward.

* I pulled the Isles rotonews widget for the summer because there was just not enough updates for it, however I did add a new one for the entire NHL in the media section toward the bottom of the blog because they only reference information from newspapers and do all the teams. The specific Isles widget will return to the sidebar along with NHL scoreboards, standings when camp opens along with our classic look.

* I moved the Daily News, Times and Post feeds below Newsday up from the bottom of the blog, there are too many sites down there now to keep them buried despite how terrible a job their editors do providing our club coverage. If anyone remembers a very old movie called Walking Tall (Joe Don Baker Version) the scene where he puts the judges chambers in the men's room was kind of where I decided to put the Post, Times and News for year one of this blog in our media section given the decisions of their editors with regard to our team.

* I'm working on a fix for not having a message board this season that used to have Mr Prospects outstanding game by game prospect updates for all of us but for now I have added a link to the prospect coverage section that includes Newspaper Coverage for all Junior leagues in North America, I also found a link that can reference most prospect boxscores in North America.

What's in the works/under consideration as a solution is a brand new widget like the one we have now for the local writers, Islanders website updates and the separate one for the blog box updates.

This new one will be the most involved of all because it will have every RSS feed from every North American/College paper that covers a specific club where an Islander prospect plays. I'm not sure how many of those papers link up to their hockey teams that way and depending on how this goes will determine if I do it or not because many small town/college papers do not have specific rss feeds for hockey, Tsn does not even have it for hockey coverage so it's a long shot but if I that local paper has an feed we can get their game coverage so we have more information.

Linking to the major league sites (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) will give us league wide updates but that cannot be narrowed down to specific Islander prospects, I will also include this in these feeders.

What I will do for sure and have almost finished behind the scenes is locating links for our prospects that linking to their latest games or team boxscores so you can visit here and follow what they are doing, some leagues do game by game player breakdown, others do not (QMJHL) or you have to go to the boxscore sections.

I'm not sure if I can do this for the European prospects but first things first.

I will never have the time to go from page to page and put together a digest of weekly/daily game summaries as Mr Prospects does so well. I think that's an element of coverage our fans need.

Anyway that's what's up around here, this is one of my pre-scheduled vacation blogs on the timer.

Updated Wednesday:
I spoke for about twenty minutes on Tuesday afternoon with Professional Hockey Writers Association President Kevin Allen as we discussed briefly the process for joining the association and a lot of hockey-media related subjects. It was very classy of him to go out of his way like that to return my call and was a pleasure to speak with and taught me a lot in that short time.

I will have more on this in a few days.

Thursday's Live Blog Cancelled

I am very sorry folks, some unexpected things came up for Thursday at 1pm so I will not be able to host a live blog as I intended.

I promise there will be more of them in the future.

Thanks as always.

A few words on the blog box program

Islanders website: Announced they are accepting applications for additions to their blog box program with what they are looking for with a little background.


NYI Fan Central Comments:
I know there are a lot of folks here reading this blog and some may expect here I may write something that's a lot of fluff praising the club because my blog was accepted last October/early Novemember.

Nothing would be further from the truth nor would I waste anyone's time doing a blog about it if that were the case.

One of the things I suggested to the club at the end of the season was to get as many folks as possible involved in the program and add as many bloggers as they can because it only helps grow the teams message.

I highly encourage anyone considering filing an application to do so because the folks involved with this program with the club have been nothing but first class, whether it be Mr Witt, Mr Botta, (now Mr Bernstein in some manner) or anyone else from the team.

As a person who does this blog from my own perspective they took my blog under the premise I would be doing it not as a participating member or someone who sits in the box but as someone who goes to games and does things my own way just as the other folks to a great job doing things their own way. I have no desire to become a journalists but feel this club needs as many New York Islander fans as possible to break into the business.

In my estimation there are a lot of great blogs out there beyond the other twelve that would be outstanding additions.

Whether I'm part of the blog box program moving forward is not a huge deal to me (even though the club said they intended to keep the link earlier) but what is important to know is these folks have been honest and up front from day one and if your on the fence about sending in an application I would highly recomend you do.

I would guess most of the other tweleve blog box members would feel the same but I'm sure they will tell your their own stories about this. I wanted to let you know where I stand if your considering sending in an application.

My only problem is seeing how many feeds I can add into the blog box widget at NYI Fan Central on the sidebar so you can get the latest from everyone but I promise I will find a way.....LOL

Satan-Fedotenko to Pens/NYIFC Schedule

A bit of a step back today in terms of updates.....NOT

I guess I did not expect Bridgeport decided to fill out it's roster today.

Doing a blog reporting other teams resignings including minor league players is a bit counterproductive at this point.

The feeders and crawls will be doing most of the work in that department here with regard to the other twenty nine teams. All the free agent sites with updates are on the sidebar with the two radio shows if they are still doing live NHL signing shows.

Islander notables will have the news/blog updates. Islander and Sound Tiger transactions I will play it as it goes.

Satan/Fedotenko to Pittsburgh were added with comments.

News updates will be added to the blog already posted on today's News articles.

Tonight at 7:30pm I will be appearing as one of the guest on Hockey Night on LI with Alex and Steve who do an excellent show along with Ken Rosenblatt who is a member of the Islanders blog box and does outstanding work with his blog called Islanders Outsider that is also featured on the sidebar here with his latest updates.

After that I will do the early Friday articles but that will be about it for the weekend unless a major announcement/trade involving the New York Islanders take place or Doug Weight has a few words.

Finally:
If Mr Botta does follow through on his plan to close his blog on 7/7 (which appears to be the case being that he stopped permitting comment) despite NYI Fan Central hope and earlier blog that he reconsiders. I would once again like to thank him for all he has given the New York Islander Franchise for over twenty years and wish him nothing but the best moving forward and hope he keeps following the club in his own way.

Of course he's always welcome to visit here.

Live interactive blog Tuesday 7/1 7pm

Barring any unforeseen circumstances I have scheduled another live interactive blog to talk Islander hockey and UFA on 7/1 at 7pm.

Sorry folks, some problems with doing a poll for a time because blogger had some problems.

I got a few responses and aside from one all felt 7pm was the best time to schedule an interactive blog for the first day of UFA.

Given my schedule 7pm is the best time for me and at least at 7pm we should have some signings to talk about and at the very least at least something from the Islanders on what they are looking to do.

I hope to speak with everyone on Tuesday, it will go as long as folks have something to say but I'm guessing an hour or two and not the increduble marathon we have last week.

Thanks again.

6/21: Day two NHL draft live Interactive blog

A few things:
Islanders website has been added as a crawler to top of this blog next to NYI Fan Central blog updates page so everyone can access updates on draft picks almost as quickly as Isles post them.

I have NHL TV here but I'm not sure if they will be on air live for day two. If they are I will add the picks as announced on the floor in the blog.

Several live trackers are on sidebar for anyone who wants to follow draft as picks are posted.

Crawl at very top of blog has updated draft picks, not sure what Isles will do with optional pick at 60th but I will fill in that crawl manually with picks as quickly as possible as I live blog.

Were going to need all the folks possible who do a lot of research who can give us the steals still remaining, Ryan Jankowski talked about many second rounders who in other drafts will be first rounders. Isles have at least three second rounders and perhaps four.

Blog will go live at 9:55 this morning, need a few extra minutes.

My thanks again last night for an amazing turnout here, everyone made it a great chat, far beyond anything I expected with over four full hours.

How our live chat will work tonight and Saturday

First off it's been a while but my thanks to everyone for the incredible turnout of people e-mailing and visiting this blog on a daily basis. There are so many folks that visit daily I feel obligated to do my absolute best for everyone.

It's like hockey season for the Islanders never ended here.

I hope many of you decide to visit Friday night and join the chat or just say hello so I can thank you personally for your support here, if not there is always Saturday morning and everyone is welcome. All I ask is we keep things focused on the Islanders and the hockey.

Friday night at around 6:30 I will start a new blog that will include a live chat box without registration. At 6:45pm the box will go live where anyone can add discussion as I put in the picks as we start talking Islanders/NHL draft. I will also add the feed to the Islanders website to the scrolling tickers we have now and add in as much as I can on the picks as they come in.

With one pick only for night one it could get slow for Islander centric content but we'll see.

I have a lot of sites that have draft trackers but no one came up with a crawl for blogs and never have in the past. The one I hand made at the top of the page will be updated manually.

In between live blogs I will do the early Saturday morning news articles recapping the first round.

Saturday morning after the articles I'm going to repeat this again starting at 9:30am with a brand new blog that will go live at 9:45am until the draft is done. Again I will put in links to all the prospect updates on the new players I can find.

I'm going to need some help with round two and on because I really have not done much research.

When everything is finally done around Sunday (likely Monday) I will update the Islanders prospect center on the blog with the new draft picks and then early next week slowly remove the draft center as things move to free agency.

Thanks again, hope to speak with you tonight. I threw in a quick poll for your final first round pick which is a repeat from a while back which closes at 7pm Friday.

NYI Fan Central has full access to the NHL Network on television so if they are live for the second round tomorrow I should be able to get out the selections quickly along with versus tonight for the first round.

The feedburner widget has been taken down for now so folks can access the live draft trackers quickly. All the NYI Fan Central blog update feeds are still in the crawler and all over the blog.

More feeds from major news outlets have been added to media section of the blog toward bottom. I think every major hockey outlet and more has things covered.

NHL.com has not put up a live draft tracker yet, when they do I will add it in with the links above.

Live interactive blogging here during the draft

Were about one week away from the 2008 Entry Draft for the Islanders.

Some of you have asked me about the little grey box on the side of the blog and what a live interactive blog is being that the box has been there now for well over a month?

So how does this work?

Basically I will start a blog that will include a chat box which will appear where everyone can type in real time about the draft or anything Islanders I can set up live polls and some some other fun things but in essence it's a chat box and a running live blog for everyone that requires no registration.

Could go boom or bust, especially with the first night being only for the first round which could mean one pick and little else Islander-related. The start time for the 6/20 live blog is 6:45pm and for day two Saturday with nine picks I have scheduled the live blog to begin at 9:45am.

I hope some of my readers will be here and be a part of this. I can promise I will do all I can to provide a good blog with a ton of updates for everyone. I will be adding in more feeds to the top of the blog so we get as many updates as possible.

Anyway my thanks to everyone and hope to talk with you next Friday and Saturday.

Side note:
I'm running into some family circumstances but unless something goes seriously wrong in that department I do plan to having the scheduled live interactive blogs here at NYI Fan Central next Friday and Saturday.

Draft weekend interactive blog

Some announcements for folks reading this blog on what's ahead.

1. That grey box announcing a live blog on 6/20 on will allow folks to come here and talk Islander hockey here draft day in the blog itself. I will be doing this both Friday night and Saturday morning as Friday is only for round one and Saturday for the remaining picks.

I hope a lot of folks decide to visit and be a part of it as I promise a good two days of interactive blogging/hockey talk as I would like to hear from even more of my readers here, what you think about the Isles draft and the team.

No signups, no subscriptions, just come and talk Islander hockey. Any questions please feel free to ask. I will pack the blog with updates and all the information I can find on the players the Isles select.

2. I decided to pull back from the message board concept I have been working on because it's too time consuming to do a blog/message board and the more things I want out of a board the more work it is to maintain it. If enough folks e-mail me and say that want a message board here I will revisit it.

3. I added back in the scoreboard so folks could follow the playoff games. After the recent blogger monster problems shutting things down here I have been scaling back changes so the page loads quicker for everyone and there are no more problems.

4. I keep adding to the prospect and draft centers with all updated articles so please keep checking. I finally added in a Troy Mattila mini article/profile which the Islanders did not have in the prospect section.

5. The season ending reviews will be continuing, took a short break from them and have to remember who I have yet to review.

6. My old Islanders-Sound Tigers mailing list does not allow me to change the settings so everyone can read/view archives so to put a link here to it would not work for anyone and only give everyone a log in page. I will post old updates at times from the list as many have already seen.

7. Finally found a rss feed for Kyle Woodlief's Red Line Reports from USAToday.com that will be permanent here even after the draft.

8. Picture link added for Tsn.ca in both the sidebar and the media section so folks can find their site. They do not have a seperate hockey feeder.

Thanks again for the great support.

WC update, Mr Botta, Newsday/Cablevision

Finland will again play team USA in a rematch at the WC on Wednesday as the Quarterfinals begin. If there is anything printed on Bergenhiem's playing status I will add it to the blog.

For the semi-finals in Quebec City, the winner of CZE-SWE will play the winner of NOR-CAN, and the winner of RUS-SUI will play the winner of USA-FIN.
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Point Blank: Mr Botta continues blogging, tells us about the Islanders concept for podcasting that never happened he hopes will and talks about some segments completed which include one where Garth Snow was interviewed.

He also talks about Ryan Jankowski who oversaw the 2006 draft among other subjects and feels he will do an excellent job.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
I expected nothing less from Mr Botta but great Islander information as his blog remains very active from a first class individual who obviously is a fan of the Islanders above all.

If Garth Snow's comments are correct that he's trying to sign prospect Stefan Ridderwall and bring him to Bridgeport you have to think Joey MacDonald with a one way signed contract for next season already would become the Islanders new backup goaltender and Wade Dubielewicz could be moving on but I suppose anything could happen in that regard.

Truth is Dubie could start for a few teams in this league right now and I have little doubt he would do an excellent job. The Islander fan in me wants him to stay and the Dubielewicz fan in me wants to see him start for someone.

SI.com: Richard Deitsch also praised Mr Botta today writing he was one of the few pleasures of interacting with the Islanders franchise during the past decade. He predict's Mr Botta will be proved as a visionary when it comes to the relationship between professional sports teams/bloggers and echoed Adam Proteau of THN in that the Isles are far poorer today without him.

Newsday: Several writers contributed to today's report on the sale of Newsday to Cablevision and what's ahead with the Dolan family comments.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
I think I read the same thing a decade ago when Sportschannel and Msg merged, next thing we knew the Islanders home opener was taken off television, playoff games were put on Metro, Islander coverage starting getting reduced and ratings went down.

If folks think I'm not being fair here or overestimating the impact because I'm an Islander fan all I can do is invite you to look at what the people covering Msg in the media say in this article by John Koblin in the New York Observer here this is what insiders say covering sports under Cablevision, not myself.

I cannot add to that.

NYI Fan Central Notables/WC update

Sorry folks, looks like the blogger monster shut things down for a day or so with some problems.

From what I understand one of the new blogger feeder widgets was the problem for a lot of folks but being that I had a feeder for all those websites anyway I deleted it.

Along those lines the page may load slowly but for now it appears to be back which is what matters.

The comments in Joel Rechlicz topic got caught up in what happened and were lost as I attempted to approve them on Thursday so the wrecker apparently lived up to his nickname.

I deleted/reposted the thread but the comments I could not recover. If the same folks want to again repost what they had to say of course I will approve it.

I did push back some blogs I had scheduled for the next few days so they would be released at a point everyone can read them when hopefully things are back to a hundred percent.

Just wanted to update everyone on why you have not been able to access the page and of course thank everyone.

As for the important hockey-related items:

IIHF.com: John Sanful reports Finland needed a sixty one shot effort to win again at the WC Friday in their 2-1 win against Latvia.

Note-Sean Bergenheim had no stats, only played three minutes and did not see the ice in the third period after seeing a little more than a minute in the first two periods. He was not the only forward benched but he has not been seeing many minutes at the WC so far.

Finland's next game is Sunday against team USA.

It goes without saying Mr Botta's blog will continue here as long as he decides to write updates which seems to be 7/7 according to his update. I hope folks contact his blog and ask he keep it going permanently because obviously he loves hockey and what he has to say is always worth reading.

The Edmonton Sun had some comments from the Oil Kings on Robin Figren.

Katie Strang in Newsday's blog is promising a feature.

Mr Fornabaio in the Ct Post has been updating his blog on the AHL playoffs and some other things.

I did update the draft center with the latest update today from the Islanders website.

Of course by now everyone knows Toronto fired Paul Maurice.

Espn.com: Scott Burnside reports the Thrashers are about to ask gm Don Wadell to step down.

Denver Post: Adrian Dater reports Joel Quenneville will not be returning as coach of the Colorado Avalanche with comments from the former coach and and general manager Francois Giguere.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
Can anyone imagine if Charles Wang or Garth Snow decided to do this. Quenneville was not hired by this general manager, he was hired by former gm Pierre Lacroix.

For those scoring at home: Dave Nonis, Bob Hartley, Joel Quenneville, Glen Hanlon and Paul Maurice are among the name coaches currently looking for work.

Seems like only one open spot at center

Funny thing looking through this roster with all the talk of UFA and prospects.

The club is locked into a lot of players.

By all reports Mike Sillinger will be back for the final year of his contract.

Mike Comrie is signed for next season.

That leaves a possible replacement for Josef Vasicek and his sixteen goals and a fourth line player which could include:

Richard Park
Andy Hilbert
Shawn Bates
Frans Nielsen
Jeremy Colliton
Ben Walter

To say nothing of bringing in an unrestricted free agent at center.

Seems to me not much room to maunever unless something unexpected happens.