The TRUTH About the New York Islanders Tanking Discourse

The TRUTH About the New York Islanders Tanking Discourse

But I wanted to start, Mitch, with the this conversation that I think I’ve seen brought back up and not necessarily just with Islanders fans. It’s been on like hockey Twitter in general, which is tanking discourse. And I just find it a little weird that it’s rearing its head again right now, 16 games into the season. Yeah. I I think it’s just because fan bases hate the mushy middle, right? They just want to avoid it at all costs. And so it’s either at this point in the year they figure that the team has figured out we’re either going to be good or bad. Um and so might as well get your ducks in a row now. If you’re bad, be the worst. U but there can only be one the worst. And even then being the one the worst doesn’t always work out as we noticed this year, right? Getting Matthew Schaefer. Um but the idea is to you know you want to tank and so you might as well get started now because you’re not going to catch those teams in like let’s say January when you try to figure it out. I guess I guess so. But like I don’t know. I’m looking at the standings right now and Vegas, Edmonton, they’re on the outside looking in. Uh, you know, you have teams like Philadelphia in a playoff spot. You have teams like San Jose in a playoff spot. And who knows, maybe they stick. Like the Ducks are just, I don’t know, apparently like the best team in the league just about. Um, I my point being is like this feels like such a weird time to bring it up because I don’t think one we have a a big enough sample and I just don’t really care for the discussion in the first place because the the stem of where this comes from is the idea that really the only way to be successful in the NHL is you have to suck for five years. Yeah. Top five five years in a row. And I just don’t I don’t view it the same way. That’s I just don’t I mean has there been any team that has used that we’re going to be bad for five years and then build this you know wheelhouse this wagon if you will that’s going to destroy the league for let’s say 10 I don’t know if that’s really been done successfully again Edmonton did it it was not successful um if you’re looking even outside of the NHL out like the Philadelphia 76ers did it. That didn’t work. Um, so what’s that? It’s not the way to to build a hockey team. It’s really not. It’s a great way to get building blocks. Absolutely. You get, you know, one or two deep like really good prospects to start building your core off of. Sure, maybe even three, but then the acquis then you’ve got to acquire them in other ways. Either through free agency, either through um through trades. I guess he only has the other two venues there. um that that’s how you build the team. It is not solely done through top five picks. Hell, the Islanders tried to do it right. We went right from the Edmonton Oilers to another league, but the the Edmonton the New York Islanders did it under Gar Snow when they got Tavaris, Nino, um Del Cole, Ryan Stro, that was supposed to be their core and then failed miserably. Yeah, almost none of them were there. Griffin Reinhardt forgot about Reinhardt. Griffin Reinhardt. Now, Griffin Hart, Reinhardt helped land Matthew Barzelle, but like when I think back of the most recent Islanders core, right? Like when they were in the Eastern Conference final, Anders Lee late round pick. Brock Nelson end of the first round pick. Josh Bailey was a top 10 pick. That helps obviously, but even Matthew Barzel like that’s a middle of the first round pick. Anthony Boilier was a late round late first round pick. Uh they uh traded for Jordan Eberly. Uh they traded for Nick Ley and Johnny Boychuck. Like I just and I guess maybe the argument is well they they didn’t win anything. So see it didn’t work. But I don’t really look at and maybe it’s just because I’m seeing it with like two of my right now. It’s conversation for both the Jets and the Islanders. And the point that I bring up all the time on the other side of the coin with football, there’s a there’s a narrative that like you have to get the number one pick so that you can get the quarterback and that’s the most important thing. And while I agree the quarterback is the most position, the most important position in the sport. There’s so many examples of the first quarterback taking in a draft class not even being the best of that draft class. So it this doesn’t guarantee Now in the NHL, I feel like the massive bus, it’s rare to see like a massive bus number one overall. Who’s the last one? Yakapov. Really over 10 years ago at this point. And like there’s different variations of, you know, the the first overall pick. Like clearly Rangers fans are frustrated with uh Lafernier, but like while I don’t think he’s reached his potential and I think you could say he’s been disappointing, to me I wouldn’t classify that as a bust because you have like he’s a functional NHL player. Um yeah, and like this just feels like such a a crapshoot sport and to go the only way to build it is you have to be terrible for like five to eight years. I I don’t see it that way. Like with Matthew Dar in his interview, I don’t think they were John Collins was asking him like when what’s your plan to have the Islanders in contention seven years from now? I don’t if you’re bad if Matthew Dar is bad like and they end up tanking this year, which I don’t think and Mitch didn’t think so either. I’ll put the words in his mouth for him that they were going to be like a 60 point team this year. But if you’re picking in the top three for like four straight years in a row, is Matthew Dar going to get the opportunity for draft five, six, and seven for them to finally turn it around? No. They’re probably going a different direction at that point. Exactly. I I don’t think teams arguably build w with eight-year plans in mind. Uh and GMs don’t last that long either. You made a great point in our first run through like the only GM that can survive that long is Gar Snow. Yeah, that was that’s the outlier. That’s not the That’s not the norm. Exactly. They’re not hiring GMs on eight-year plans. I I don’t imagine. Obviously, I’m not in those those conversations. But when you look at even just coach uh co coaching contracts, they’re like four years long because that’s where they view a cycle. That’s where they view like, well, by four years, we should be where we want to be type of thing. And if we’re not, well, then we got to get out of business with this guy. Um, and so I kind of imagine it’s the same thing with GMs. Maybe it’s a fiveyear thing with GMs just to give them that extra little bit of year and you know give it to the clean five type of thing. Um but that’s the furthest that they’re looking out. It is certainly not eight years. And I don’t think there’s a single franchise out there that’s going to be let us be awful for five years. This is a league that makes its revenue I’m going to say 66% of its revenue based off gate receipts alone. If you’re bad for five years, you’re not getting bumps and seats and you’re not making money. That’s a huge problem for this league there. The league in and of itself won’t tolerate it, let alone the owner owners themselves tolerate that kind of suckery. No. And on purpose, right? And I think the I’m glad you brought up the the number of years as five because I feel like that is like four or five years is usually like a general manager contract. I know we don’t usually see those, but that makes sense. But I think they would want a return on their investment by the end of that contract with a look to to extend you, right? Like one, it’s very rare in sports for a coach or a general manager to be a lame duck coach or general manager and go into their final year of the contract and not have that next year of stability. There’s examples of it. Barry Trotz was a a good example of that uh in Washington, but it it’s it’s not the norm. The norm is that, you know, they get an extension before they reach that final year. So, you’re talking at some point within the first four years, you have to be showing some signs of progress there. And I’m not, this isn’t me saying that the Islanders have to win the Stanley Cup in the in one of the next five years. I would like that to be the case. Am I going to bet on that right now? I can’t say that confidently with where they are, but I sure as hell hope they are in five years from now. at least a playoff team, a team that’s perennially contending for a playoff spot after what in my opinion should be I don’t if you don’t even want to include last year, say this year and the next year of a turn it over kind of transition. There we go. That’s the word that I was looking for. Transition. Yeah, I really liked the term turn it over because it’s not like well we have to start the process clean whether it’s a retool or a rebuild and like this is day one of the retool rebuild. It it is a a turnover because you have an older core of the Bohorvat, Matthew Barzal, Elilia Sroken. If you want to just name the three better players of our core and then you’re going to turn it over to Matthew Schaefer and let’s just put names there just for the sake of it like Cole Eisermanman, Cal Richie, um Victor Ecklan, and Quan Hes. We’re just putting names there. I’m I’m not trying to project what they’re going to be or anything. That’s the transition that that as far as it seems right now is the plan. It’s to go from this older core into newer core, but try to keep the transition period not as long as it as we would, you know, as it would normally be, right? Like it might take three years for Matthew Shaver to reach his peak from here, maybe four, because he’s still quite freaking young. But they want to bridge that gap by having the current core be as as good as they can possibly be, which is what we’re seeing right now. And then that young the young sample or the young core come back come in and kind of like take the baton slowly one at a time and then we don’t have a drop off anywhere near there anywhere within that period I mean to say right because you have like I’m just looking at the Islanders roster right now they’ve had they are you know adding some younger pieces in here like Schaefer’s 18 so let’s say three years from now you’re looking at 21-year-old Schaefer Heinaman 27 Holmstrom 27 um Some guys like Druin, Lee, Pejo probably not here. Pal Mary probably not here. Uh but then you’re adding in, you would hope guys like Cal Richie will be 24 three years from now. And um hopefully some of maybe not all but some of Cole Eisermanman, Victor Ecklan, Kahan Herson, and whoever else you’re drafting in this upcoming draft. Yeah, exactly. Which we have two first round picks for. That’s the thing when it comes to this tanking situation. I I I don’t believe I don’t I don’t even believe I don’t like that argument visa v the New York Islanders. I don’t think we’re in any position to tank. Um I don’t think we’re in any position to tank successfully even. Um sometimes in that in this discord some people forget that tanking isn’t just a switch that you can flick on. Uh coaches and players play to win. Uh, so to to tank effectively, you have to get rid of winning coaches and winning players. So that means you’re trading Bohorvat, you’re trading Matthew Barzal, you’re trading Ilia Sroken, um Ryan Pock, Pulock, sorry, Adam Pel, and that’s fine. I’m sure some of the names out there, some people are going, “Yep, check check.” But you’re you’re going to have to trade these players at a loss. And so what the hell is the point of trading these players at a loss? What are you gaining out of that? To be bad? That’s stupid. Yeah, like again it’s just a philosophy a different view on the philosophy, right? And I’m sure there probably are people that that think that way. I know there are because I’ve seen it. Um and it’s just I don’t think I can ever get myself to to that point. And you know different, right? Like if Horvat, Barzal, and Sroken were not here. Yeah. And you’re talking about, hey, like the only vets that you have to trade off are Pomeary, Druan, Lee, Pou, and they’re rocking with like, I don’t know, a goalie who’s on the last year. Like, that’s a very different spot. Like you you are starting from scratch. This isn’t a start from scratch. This is a we have a couple of pieces, not enough but a couple and you add a number one pick to it and then you add two more picks in that same draft to it and then the following year you add two if not more depending on what you get for Anders Lee/JG Pou come trade deadline. So I’m not even saying that like the Islanders retooling process is all the way done. It’s not. I think, you know, we’re going to see that continue this off season, but I would also like to see them add not, you know, 28 year olds in in a trade like the Bo Horvat trade that they made a few years ago. That doesn’t make sense for the team where they are right now. But with the copious amounts of assets that they have, if a RFA becomes available, which seems to happen every summer, then that’s someone that you should be in on to try to start turning this ship into the positive direction here. Yeah, the Protank crowd, I believe, forgot that we effectively tanked last year without actually having to tank, right? Like the point of a tank is to get really high prospects. We’ve got three in one draft in one year. Three. What do we Why would we want to tank again? Yeah, we still have two first round picks, but like to to do what exactly? If we happen to get a top five pick, cool, fine. Um, but that seems very unlikely based off the roster that we were currently rocking right now and how effective they have been. And so, we’ve done the the tear down part without actually having to tear it down. Now we can take some of these pieces like like you mentioned Jean Gabriel Pot or Andrew Lee or Kyle Palm Mary and take those guys and yeah trade them for picks and whatnot and prospects but use those to package to get as you’re saying those highlevel RFAS that we haven’t been able to get in the past. Like that’s how we’re that’s where we’re at right now and that’s a really good time. That’s a really good place to be. We’re already two years out, two years into the rebuild, if you will, without actually having to go through the two years of sucking. Yeah, they they did this from the middle, the mushy middle, as we referenced in the beginning. Yeah, which is like really really lucky. I think I was going to say great. It’s not great, but it’s lucky. And I I know some people might take exception to the word saying like we didn’t do the sucking part because we weren’t very good a couple years ago. That’s fair. But we weren’t San Jose or Chicago or Anaheim bad. That’s sucking when we’re winning at like 400 percentage, whatever. Like that’s not what we were doing. No. And like the Islanders were a very mediocre team the last four years. 84, 93, 94, 82 points over that last four years. That’s that’s a a fringe playoff team, right? Like very the definition of mediocre over that run. There’s teams that are finishing with like 58 points. Like I think we have to we have to put into perspective how how bad it can be. Like I don’t I was around for you know the Islanders finishing with god what uh 61 points in 2009 or 73 points in 2011. Like this this h that’s bad hockey. That’s bad teams. It’s bad teams man. So, we have to use some of the assets we have to to then pick up some of these high, you know, um, high level pro not prospects because it’s not necessarily players that haven’t played here uh in the NHL by by what I mean here, but high level players that are ready for the next step, right? Like I we’re just seeing now reports that the Islanders had already talked with the New Jersey Devils over Simon Simone Neich over the summer. Can that resurface again next year over the offseason? Maybe. Do we have enough? I I don’t know. It’s going to be up to the Devils in terms of what they want to do. Um, but maybe that’s something we can revisit because that would be a nice right-handed defenseman that we could use for our

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