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.