Lou Lamoriello has a decision in front of him that no other president/general manager in the NHL must confront. But these are the Islanders, and that must always be remembered regardless of how transformative Lamoriello’s and Barry Trotz’s twin arrivals were last year.
For Lamoriello must decide how to split his franchise’s home dates between two venues, Barclays Center and the Coliseum, and, to make matters more complex, he must do that knowing only the first round of the playoffs — if that — would be staged on the Island.
No one used it as an excuse this season. Not a player and not an executive. But when the Islanders met Carolina at Barclays for Game 1 of the second round on April 26, it marked the team’s first game in Brooklyn since Feb. 16, one day shy of 10 weeks.
This was no place like home.
“Like visiting an old friend,” is the way Trotz tried to spin it positively, when it was actually like unavoidably seeing an icky distant relative at a family reunion.
Lamoriello last week talked about understanding the nostalgia for the Coliseum. But the collective-bargaining agreement isn’t a document that accommodates either reverence or melancholy, and the fact is, every game played at the Coliseum generates lower revenue, while playoff dates at the old barn generate dramatically less income. That impacts not only the franchise’s bottom line but the cap and escrow.
The folks who operate both Barclays and the Coliseum want as few games as possible in Brooklyn, but that does not align with the league view.
“You know, Nassau Coliseum isn’t exactly a major-league, state-of-the-art facility,” Gary Bettman said May 3. “We tried to be accommodating. But we have to be realistic about what that facility is.”
The commissioner could be more realistic about the toll that hits to the head — any and all of them — extract on hockey players under his watch, but that obviously is hoping for much too much from the denier-in-chief. But back to our story.
Last year, the Islanders played 21 of their 41 home games at the Coliseum, including the final 12 (and 21 of the last 30) dates. There is no guarantee Bettman will go for that split, though the folks in Albany who have been in the middle of everything here, and that most prominently includes awarding the Belmont site to the franchise, will certainly have their say. Then it goes to the Islanders.
Regardless of the raw numbers, it would seem best this time around for Lamoriello to reverse the approach and schedule as many home games as possible in March and April for Brooklyn so that it all doesn’t seem so foreign when it is time to set up shop for the playoffs.
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When the Sharks needed a botched call to advance in Game 7 of the first round against Vegas, they got it. (Yes, they needed four power-play goals, too, but that’s a mere detail.) When they needed a letter-of-the-law reversal on an offside challenge to maintain the lead in Game 7 against Colorado, they got it. This round: a critical goaltender interference review to complete the trifecta. And then maybe San Jose will score one off a ricochet off the netting in the finals.
There is little both more stupid and more unpopular in the sport than what the offside challenge has become, the latest evidence being the letter-of-the-law reversal of an Avalanche goal because of Gabriel Landeskog’s idleness by the bench in Game 7.
If it is about getting it right, what about the dozens of offside violations that occur every night but are unnoticed or undocumented because goals did not immediately follow?
Yet as long as Bettman stands in support of it, the league GMs won’t have the brass to recommend elimination of the offside challenge.
Another hit to the head, another insufficient response from the officials on the ice, this time the Kelly Sutherland-Steve Kozari referee tandem that gave Charlie McAvoy merely a two-minute minor for his blow to Josh Anderson in Game 7 of Boston-Columbus.
And if it is true, as suggested by folks of pedigree, that the refs did not give McAvoy the match penalty (and the Jackets a five-minute major) he’d earned because they were concerned about repercussions if proved wrong by replay, as happened in the botched mess Dan O’Halloran and Eric Furlatt made of Game 7 of San Jose-Vegas, then that is as big an indictment of NHL officiating as I can recall.
Or at least since VP of officiating Stephen Walkom got that standing ovation at either a Board of Governors or GMs meeting a few years ago.
Honestly, social media does not get any better than a subsection of Rangers fans acting all horrified over the prospect that the Devils might opt to select Kaapo Kakko first overall, thus allowing Jack Hughes to slide to the Blueshirts at No. 2.
Nico/Nolan? So far, the Swiss with the edge.
Tyler/Taylor? Still too close to call, the winger with a Hart but the center — a center — who has been healthier and has posted better numbers.
Jacko/Kakko? We’ll see.
Not quite John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander, but you do know that the Flyers traded Justin Williams when he was 22 years old to Carolina for defenseman Danny Markov, who played a sum of 34 regular-season games with Philly?
Finally, in the realm of all-time trades, there is Boston acquiring Tuukka Rask from Toronto for Andrew Raycroft in a one-on-one goaltender exchange in June 2006, when Jeff Gorton was operating as interim/acting GM while waiting for Peter Chiarelli to be released from his obligation in Ottawa.
Raycroft, who won the 2004 Calder, played 91 games for the Leafs over two years. Rask is the front-runner for the Conn Smythe Trophy.