miscs75
Registered User
- Jul 2, 2014
- 5,892
- 5,558
Exactly. It's going to be a waiting period to see which young talent turns into something and which doesn't. Lou wants to evaluate but they don't want to go full on Edmonton and implode from within to win the lottery by a long shot (and win it 3 of the following 5 years as well). If the team just doesn't win because of the lack of high end talent, so be it.Lou has said it's an evaluation season, which means rebuild to me. While the door is open for the Isles to be a Cinderella team if everything comes together magically, they're likely going to be relatively bad. Trotz will have them playing hard every night and they'll be a pain in the ass to play against, they just lack the high end talent to win consistently. Too many question marks on defense and in goal. The Isles have a ton of pending UFA's and some with real value. I see Lee, Eberle, Nelson, and possible Lehner dealt for picks and prospects. The kids waiting in line like Bellows and Ho-Sang get their half season to audition for next season.
Stockpile talent at the draft with likely multiple 1sts and 2nds with one possibly top-5ish. Wahlstrom and Dobson could very well be in the mix in 2019-2020. Lou takes on the Russian Mob and gets Sorokin over. The Isles will have a ton of cap space and the assets to make a trade of maybe even sign someone of significance.
Suddenly the Isles are a young team worth watching again.
Personally, I feel as if Eberle may be signed during the season since he seems to be one of the few guys who can keep up with Barzal. I would sign him for a 4 year deal (4.5-5.5m per season max). Lee will be interesting to see what happens since you know who wont be trying to play 1 against 5 to throw pucks on net with him. As for Nelson, he's just an odd man out based on numbers and Lehner is a 1 year prove it deal. If he's good, awesome but if he's terrible, send him down and bring up Gibson. Same goes for Greiss.
It seems like people think the Islanders have Chayka as a GM and they want to dump every bad contract onto the to eat up space. Garth never did that, he seemed to move out guys who would turn into that (Freddy Meyer for Zhitnik rings a bell).