Down and Out: Should the New York Islanders make changes, or run it back?
After back-to-back appearances in the Conference Finals, the New York Islanders disappointed by not making the playoffs, although a lot of that can be attributed to a rough start that involved a lengthy road trip while waiting for their home arena to finish building, as well as a slew of injuries and COVID cases.
Unfortunately for the Islanders, there isn’t a ton of room to make significant improvements either. They have just $12 million in cap space, and no big names or contracts getting freed up, so if they want a big shakeup, it might have to come from a big trade.
Tyler Yaremchuk and Chris Gear continued the Down and Out series to talk about the Islanders offseason, and what their top priorities are.
Chris Gear: “You look at the Islanders, and they’ve got almost all of their core, almost all of their players signed. They could take the approach that ‘Hey, we had a bad year, we started on the road for 15 games, we’re going to be better next year, let’s roll with the same guys, we’ll sign Dobson, and kick up our feet for the rest of the offseason.’
I don’t think they’re going to do that. It’s something they could do, they don’t actually have a lot of guys to sign. But when you look at the Islanders roster, one thing that strikes you is that they are old, and they are locked into long term deals. Guys like Anders Lee, Cizikas, Bailey, they’ve got four, five, six years left on their deals. These are not going to age well with guys that are already 31, 32, 33. You mention Beauvillier, he’s 25, so he and Barzal are kind of the young guns on that core.
So if you can start to move maybe one of these older pieces, it’s obviously hard with the term they’ve given out, they might have to stick with them, but I think they have to be really creative and try to shake up this core a little bit because clearly just expecting that next year will be better, even though the team was better in the second half of the season, just expecting that to continue with guys getting older, I’m not convinced that’s the strategy. So getting Dobson, their D is still relatively young with Pelech, Pulock, and Dobson, but I think if there’s a way to move some of those contracts that are aging and that are long term, I would look to try and do that.”
Tyler Yaremchuk: “I don’t think they’re going to be able to move a Pageau or anything like that, or a Kyle Palmieri, they’re signed for too long at too big of money for the players that they are now, but that’s why I brought up Josh Bailey as an option, where if you need to inject some youth into this lineup, Bailey has value. You can maybe ship him to a contender, use the money you save, and go out and get someone young in this lineup. You need to try to just revive things a little bit.
The big question I have is if you’re trying to get younger and faster, is that in Lou Lamoriello’s DNA as a GM, to go out and do that, or is he the kind that’s just going to say ‘Nope, we run it back with what we have.’ Is he going to be a little stubborn, and could that be their downfall ultimately?”
Chris Gear: “Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean you saw with the signings of Palmieri, why go down that road again? Not that Kyle Palmieri’s not a good player, but it just seemed like it was more of the same vs. that youth injection you’re talking about, so I don’t know if that’s in Lou’s DNA or not, but at some point, they’ve got to turn the page on some of these guys and I think you’re right, Bailey’s probably a good candidate there and somebody with enough value that it could probably bring back something that is younger and more of a building block for the Islanders.
It’s not going to be easy. I think the Islanders could be better if they just rolled out the same lineup, but again, it’s not going to get them to where they ultimately want to be, which is perennial competitor. I think they’re on the way down unfortunately, and they do need to shake things up.”
You can watch the full episode here…