New York Islanders 2008-09 Season Preview: Sixth In Eastern Conference

Disclaimer:

Simply put if you do not follow New York Islander Hockey on a regular basis. only look at the standings on the final day of the season or only accept what a lot of professional reporters who cannot name five current players tell you but start with DiPietro's contract or the late nineties to supplement their lack of current knowledge this preview is not for you.

A lot of folks live for the page view/shock jock game and write things to simply get your attention or frankly to help generate interest in themselves as the club gets caught up in the middle of that avalanche far too often. Those folks will also provide the eye-candy pictures or jokes as they attempt to make a style based analysis that goes beyond any peripheral substance they can attempt to provide.

Truth is there is no comfort for a lot of the media in a substance based discussion of the current New York Islanders, worst of all this level of reporting has worn down a lot of long-time fans and influenced their viewpoint to where in the absence of quality coverage will now accept virtually anything in it's absence.

With that we begin our preview.
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Last year when I did my 2007-08 preview I projected the New York Islanders to be a sixth place club.

At the time I felt the players imported would make up for the scoring lost with the returning players producing more. Satan, Hunter were in contract years, had the ability to improve and when I was done checking the numbers the Islanders on paper had replaced most of the scoring the club decided not to resign or could not resign in the case of Ryan Smyth.

On paper it looked good but either the system used by Ted Nolan or the talent was not up to that task from day one as most of the new players or returning forwards simply could not produce on a regular basis. Sillinger, Hunter and Satan did not pick up the scoring slack while at best we saw uneven performances from Comrie, Fedotenko, Guerin as most forwards had scoring slumps of twenty games or longer.

Garth Snow and Ted Nolan had most of October for this group to adjust with all the downtime or solve it's problems with players from other organizations, it simply did not improve with the coach constantly pointing out this club did not have the talent to compete in a wide-open game.

The group scored two goals or less fourteen games in a row when they were almost fully healthy (aside from John Sim) and only had eleven first period goals into mid-December. Many nights the club needed to get into the second period to generate a quality chance with a team defense that was terrible at even strength which was the virtual opposite of it's 06-07 counterpart.

The powerplay was one of the worst in franchise history just as prone to allow a chance with the man advantage as they could generate one that allowed fifteen goals with it's powerplay.

Having written about all this downside, where were the the 2007-08 New York Islanders were in January of 2008? Sixth Place.

They not only competed well in the Atlantic but very well dominating the Devils and Rangers, never looking out of place aside from it's special teams against Philadelphia which was self-i