CDL Season Preview Series: New York Islanders

The Cycle Down Low Season Preview is a feature where we look at the chances for your favourite team in the 2011-2012 NHL campaign.  AND WE’RE GOING TO VEGAS!  With the new season upon us, a mere 30 days away, the CDL Season Preview Series will take you right up to game one of the new season.  Is this the year they surprise everyone and take the Cup?  Are the great expectations placed upon them too much?  Here you’ll get the scoop on what is to come for every team from both the Eastern and Western Conferences.  The breakdown will list the teams in six categories: Stanley Cup Odds (the actual odds from Bodog.ca and a breakdown of what you can expect), Lock (the best bet or biggest star on the team), Upset (the bust or player that won’t preform as well as many think), Pit Bosses (front office), Payout (the overall summary of the team), and CDL Bet (our bet at what the results will be for the team this year).

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STANLEY CUP ODDS: 80/1

The good, and awfully wealthy, people at Bodog have the Islanders as the biggest underdog heading into the season, and it really comes as no surprise.  Toiling in the basement for several years — it has been four seasons since the Islanders last tasted the playoffs — the squad from Long Island has had a difficult time getting much to go their way.  Be it injuries, financial issues, or not being able to fill the building, the Islanders have certainly become every hockey fans punchline.  All that said, it does seem like this could finally be the time the team turns around.  Or not.

It really is as simple as that for the Isles.  After a season in which they lost their all-star defenseman Mark Streit right out of the gate, it was a harbinger of things to come.  The Isles lost over 500 man games to injury, a stat that would make even a Canucks fan shiver and shake with sadness and disgust.  The key injuries, the ones that really prevented the Isles from ever getting their season rolling, were to the Swiss Streit, their power play QB, Kyle Okposo, and — do I even have to say it? — Rick DiPietro.

The oft-injured DiPietro appeared in only 26 games, the highlight of which was pretty much the summation of DiPietro’s career thus far; a one-punch KO at the hands of Penguins backup goaltender Brent Johnson, the left hook sidelining DiPietro for 8 games with a headache/concussion-like symptoms.

On top of it all, Kyle Okposo going down with a shoulder injury in training camp didn’t help the Islanders cause.  When healthy, Okposo registered over half a point per game and some would say if entirely healed he could have done more.

Most will see the Islanders name and, not without reason, shrug the team off and move on, not even giving them a chance.  But the Isles were, for a time, one of the hottest teams in the league last year.  That said, they were also one of the worst for a stretch that last much longer, a 14-game slide putting them right in their normal position in the standings.  Though it seems obvious, the point I am trying to make is that if healthy, the Isles can make some noise.  They’re not world-beaters, but they can surprise some teams.

LOCK

I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong; I didn’t think John Tavares had the skating ability to be successful in the NHL.

Plain and simple, I just didn’t see it in him.

Tavares has emerged to be exactly the offensive star the Isles thought they were getting

On the power play?  He’s a magician.  Setting up on the wall, distributing the puck, finding the soft spot in coverage, everything.  Everything he does on the power play is the right play, so much so that I thought that is all he would really become.  Think a poor-man’s Patrick Kane or Alex Kovalev.

He has absolutely, positively proven me and any other critics wrong.

With a healthy Okposo to distribute the puck to him, JT could easily surpass the 67 points he put up last year as a sophomore.  A line with Okposo and Matt Moulson, it would give the Isles a legitimate top line, something that most people would scoff at the notion of, but Tavares down the middle makes his two wingers threats to score at any time.

UPSET

Listen, we’re all fans of those guys who come out of nowhere and do well, but the Isles have a few guys who could be that “upset special” this year.  You know the team that spoils it for you?  Just that one team you always think will come through, and just never seems to get the job done?

Well, the Islanders have a few guys who have the potential to do that.

Let me preface what I am about to say by saying I like Michael Grabner.  I really do.  He’s a speedy winger, he’s got a nice release, and he can be a lethal penalty killer because of both.

Now, he has massive potential to come back and fold under the pressure and expectations.  There is a reason he didn’t make it with either Florida and Vancouver, and that’s because he’s not exactly the best at knowing where to be.  Having wheels and a shot that can make a goalie wonder how the puck got by him is all good and well, but it’s hard to do that when you’re not recovering the puck in your own end.

Grabner is also going to suffer from the return of Okposo and the Isles acquisition of Brian Rolston.  At over $5 million dollars a season, you can bet “Gremlin” will see Rolston bite into his ice time.  The thought of Grabner having another year of 50+ points makes my head spin and it’s hard to fathom that as a possibility, mostly because I just cannot see it.

And, sadly, the Isles have another right winger who could disappoint fans this year: PA Parenteau.Parenteau has been a journeyman in his short career making stops in Cincinnati, Portland, Augusta, Chicago, Norfolk, Hartford, and New York with both the Rangers and Islanders.

Prior to this season, where Parenteau was on the score sheet more often than not in his first full NHL season scoring smashing his previous career highs with 20-33-53, the six-foot wing hadn’t scored more than 8 points in a season and that was in a 22 game look with the Rangers in ’08-’09.  Before that?  A single point, an assist, in five games with the Blackhawks in ’06-’07.

The 81 games last year was Parenteau’s first full year, and, yes, maybe he did learn something or “find his game,” but fact of the matter is it’s very, very rare for a player to make a jump akin to what Parenteau has done.

If I’m wrong about both of these guys, again, I will be the first to admit it. However, as it stands now, I have utmost faith in saying that neither will produce like they did this past year.

PIT BOSSES

Jack Capuano’s AHL record with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers is what got him the position in New York, helping to continue the trend of AHL bench bosses moving up to the bigs and helping buck the recycling of coaches that was ever-present in the early 2000′s.

As soon as Capuano took over from Scott Gordon the team showed some signs of life.  He seemed to take the reigns off of them and let them all play their individual games, almost a page out of Bruce Boudreau’s book, and it showed in the successes of players who had struggled prior to his hiring.

He took a team that was 4-10-3 and turned them into a nearly .500 squad during his tenure.  With Capuano as bench boss, the Isles went 26-29-10.  If he could have gotten a clutch goal out of his patchwork squad of injury replacement players, it’s entirely possible that the Isles could have — are you sitting for this? — could have been above .500 in his tenure last season.

As for Garth Snow, it’s hard to imagine people will ever forget the albatross that is the DiPietro contract, but what they shouldn’t be forgetting is that he was once named the NHL Executive of the Year by Sports Illustrated.  Again, I hope you were sitting for that.  It’s hard to imagine anyone involved with the Islanders front office earning praise, but it happened.

Snow hasn’t done an awful lot this off-season, but the moves he have made have been great attempts at bolstering a roster that needs it.

Signed as a free-agent from the Florida Panthers, Marty Reasoner is a veteran who will help the Isles down the middle and also provide leadership in the room that was lost when Doug Weight retired this off-season.  Reasoner is getting up there in age (34), but his 32 points on an equally abysmal Panthers squad show signs that he can still contribute.  The two-year deal came with a low hit to the salary cap, only $1.35 million a season, which will help if the Isles are actually able to sign a top flight talent next off-season.

As for signing someone that fits that bill of a game changing talent?  The Isles worked on it, but to no avail.  Days before the draft, they had acquired the negotiating rights to then Vancouver Canucks defenseman Christian Ehrhoff for a 4th round pick in 2012, a pretty suave move by Snow, but were unable to sign him and have since traded him to the Buffalo Sabres reacquiring a 4th round pick in the 2012 draft in exchange.

PAYOUT

Overall, the team has filled out all its positions with players of NHL calibre, but were bitten so hard by the injury bug last year that it was nearly impossible for them to actually perform to the level they were capable of.  Let me say this, they’re not a 14th place team.  Plain and simple, their roster is better than what anyone gives them credit for.

Food for thought, with the acquisition of Rolston, Parenteau will likely be on the third or fourth line.  If he does perform anywhere near like his magic last year, and that’s a big if as far as I’ve already stated, he’s going to be one of the highest scoring bottom liners in the league.  What other team do you know that has the “problem” of putting a 50-point player from the previous season on the third or fourth line?  You’d be hard pressed to name more than maybe three, and those are teams that have developed talent to almost unfair levels.

The defense with Streit will be much improved, especially on the offensive side of the puck where they were already in the top half of the Eastern Conference (8th), and it can only get better with the way the Islanders have been drafting.  Those familiar with the World Junior Hockey Championship will recognize the name Calvin De Haan, now property of the Isles and surely to at least challenge for a spot on the opening day roster out of training camp.

Special teams will be improved, especially the power play, with the Rolston pick up and give the Isles two great shots from the backend, something you’d never expect to hear from a preview of the Islanders.  The penalty kill really wasn’t even a problem for the Islanders last year.  Shorthanded 310 times, 23rd in the league (How amazing is that when you think they had Trevor Gillies, Micheal Haley, and Zenon Konopka on the team?), they only surrendered 52 goals, an 82.3% PK clip.  Not bad for a team that finished 14th in the East, a mere point out of the basement spot.

But, as has always been the case with the Isles, the goaltending will end up becoming an issue.  You can pretty much bank on that.  Fourth most goals against in the league with almost no changes to their staff says that either Snow has a lot of faith in Al Montoya, or Evgeni Nabokov is actually serious about showing up to camp.

You know that saying, “There’s only three things in life you can count on? Life, death, and taxes?”  Well, it’s actually four.  You can count on life, death, DiPietro crumbling like a stale cookie, and the Isles never getting a new barn.  You can evade taxes, which is more than ol’ Ricky can say for left hooks.

CDL BET

New York Islanders: 11th in the Eastern Conference, 5th in the Atlantic Division

Record: 37-36-9 — 83PTS

Point Leader: John Tavares — 32G – 41A – 73P

Bold Prediction: Evgeni Nabokov actually sees time between the pipes for the Islanders.

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Just for kicks, I leave you with this, my favourite quote from the 2010-2011 NHL season.

Courtesy of Rick DiPietro: “You never go into a fight expecting you’re going to get smashed in the face that hard.”

Nope, you sure don’t, Rick.

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