It’s been a blessing in disguise that I’ve been spending the last four months as busy as I’ve ever been. Part of that was moving into a new house, which in turn caused me to lose my automatically-renewed-by-DirecTV Center Ice subscription after switching to a regular cable company service. None of this is important to you but it does explain my lack of commitment to this blog and, to a lesser extent, the New York Islanders. Since upstate New York is a designated Buffalo Sabres market, I only get to watch about 50 Isles games per year without Center Ice.
Turns out most of the games were better off not watched.
What a disaster it has been.
The tire fire that is the Islanders 2016-2017 season finally consumed the job of head coach. To the joy and relief of many fans the team fired Jack Capuano as the team languished in the basement of the Eastern Conference. In typically messy (for this season’s team) fashion, the firing came after one of the squads more convincing victories. Because why just facepalm when you can double facepalm?
After all the cheering, the majority reaction turned to a collective, “Now what?”. In order to understand where the Islanders may go from here, we need to understand how they got wherever it is they are right now. As much as Capuano needed to go, there were a few things about him and the team that can’t be forgotten as they move forward again (hopefully). The mob calling for the coach’s head sometimes forgets why he was coach for so long in the first place.
Jack Capuano: Blue Collah, Hahd Workah
It was almost a universal truth that Capuano could only take the Islanders so far. He was always the player’s coach who can develop young players and get the team back into perennial contention, but wouldn’t win the Stanley Cup. He accomplished that. Of course there’s examples of young players who have had highly questionable development under Cappy (Josh Bailey, Nino Niederreiter, and Ryan Strome are the prime examples), but there’s also plenty of examples of young players fulfilling their potential under his watch. The players that he inherited like Kyle Okposo and Frans Nielsen (insert sad GIF) arguably reached their full potential under his guidance. Without counting the other inherited, franchise player John Tavares (who would thrive even with me as head coach), players like Brock Nelson, Travis Hamonic, Casey Cizikas, Matt Martin, and Calvin de Haan have all became as good as the organization could have hoped for. That’s not to say guys like Cizikas aren’t over paid (he is) or guys like de Haan aren’t replaceable (he is), but as far as potential goes I think the Isles got what they were looking for. Even a guy like Anders Lee, who is not being used properly and has more potential to realize, has become a very good NHL player regardless of where he goes from here.
Capuano accomplished a lot with this group. Ten months ago he would coach them to a first-round playoff victory. No team on the planet would fire a coach after that. The biggest problem with this season was not Jack Capuano. He did fail to adjust his “smaht, hahd” system of play to the new veterans on the team and that was a contributing factor to the team’s bad play. But the roster he was given to start the year wasn’t build to succeed with him as coach. For that reason he had to go, but the problems didn’t start with him and he couldn’t cover them up.
Garth Snow: Deer, Meet Headlights
The biggest culprit for the Isles has been Garth Snow. I’ve always been a Garth defender. I’ve loved most of his moves since he started the rebuild at the 2008 NHL Draft. I think he and the scouting staff he built have drafted pretty well. Since that draft, he has picked a number of good NHLers and still has one of the better farm systems in the league. Not all those picks are still with the team of course, but that doesn’t make his selection of them any less valid. It is Snow’s other choices that have become his undoing. Prior to his deal for Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk, Snow was content to try and be shrewd with the waiver wire and off-the-radar free agents. His one attempt at a splash (Thomas Vanek) was a colossal failure but he was able to keep the team on track with the widely acclaimed Leddy/Boychuk deals. One of Snow’s calling cards was his ability to re-sign the young players he drafted to manageable RFA deals. I acknowledge that it’s easier dealing with RFAs (where the GM has all the leverage), but he nonetheless signed them all to reasonable deals.
Snow’s big test was when his first crop of core UFAs came up. Even with new owners who were willing to back up a bank truck to Steven Stamkos’ house in Tampa Bay, he decided against giving Okposo and Nielsen their big contracts and instead signed other players to fill the gaps. While he did save $3.5 million in cap space (an important asset) by choosing to sign Andrew Ladd and Jason Chimera instead, it was a fatal blow to Capuano’s entrenched system and the Islanders’ season that neither Snow nor Cappy could fix.
R.I.P. 2016-2017 season.
A Season In A Car, Minus A Head In The Garage
The real crux of that “What now?” feeling has everything to do with Garth Snow. We are now cheering for a team run by a GM who wasn’t adept enough to sign the proper players for the his longtime head coach’s system. These are two men rumored to be living at the same residence, for God’s sake. Add to it the rumor that former majority owner Charles Wang gave Snow a little going away present before selling the team and we’re looking at Snow being around a long, long time.
If the rumors are true (about Snow’s big contract extension, not who is in his basement) then the only way to try and contain Garth’s future moves – without firing him outright and paying him a lot of money to go away – is to install a team president.
Before continuing, let me be clear that I think Snow being kicked upstairs to become the new president while the team hires a new GM is not the answer. It would still be Snow in charge, still be “his GM” and in essence his new coach (whoever that may be in the future). Snow needs to be kept in check if he isn’t going to be fired. Making him the boss, even as a figurehead, just doesn’t cut it.
Luckily Snow has a general distain for the media and PR side of his job so if he were asked to take a back seat on the public side of things he’d likely be OK with it. But even though Garth could disappear from a public perspective, he may not be willing to give up that much power in the trenches. In fact, I’d bet on it considering his history as a competitive player and executive. That means new owner Jon Ledecky should seek out the strongest personality he can find. Someone with a long list of accomplishments and/or a stubborn and vocal attitude who can bark orders and have them followed (or make Snow quit).
Hire the guy in the tux, not the guy in the bathrobe.
The new boss can’t be an ex-player. They can’t hire a Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy or Pat LaFontaine to tell Garth what to do. It won’t work. It’ll just be Jimmie trying to tell the bloody hitmen to get out of his kitchen while they comment on how good his coffee is.
Embarrassment: It’s What We Know
The idea of Garth Snow being publicly neutered might excite many Isles fans, but the organization will again be quickly skewered by the hockey media. At this point, what does that matter? We’ve been living in a competitive paradise for a couple of seasons now, but it’s not like we don’t know how it feels to have our team berated in print and television. It sucks to go back, but I feel the team has to take one more on the chin in order to keep from being forced into another (gasp…choke) rebuild. Now that would be too embarrassing to handle.
I’d also rather deal with the misery of a failed, playoff-less season than see the other, most-Islander thing possible happen. With Doug Weight serving as interim coach – a job no one expects him to keep after the season – the team plays well enough to get close to the playoffs (or even…gasp!…into the playoffs). While cheering for the Isles in the playoffs would be a welcome surprise, it would greatly increase the chance that Doug Weight is hired as the next coach and Garth Snow is given a reprieve. In my opinion neither of these things is good for the long term success of the franchise. It’s better for them to be sellers at the trade deadline, get a decent first round pick and give all the money they have to Tavares on July 1st.
Yes, I know how that sounds. In my heart I’d love to see the Islanders in the playoffs, but my brain says it’s better to give the organization a clean slate when the car has to pull out of the garage for the 2017 offseason instead of driving around with remnants of the bloody corpse of last season in the back seat.
Altar Of Bossy 