Goalie Woes, Dubie & Small Deal.

Tough game last night against the Rangers. The Islanders made two mistakes and they both ended up costing them. Chris Campoli gaveth the Islanders a 1-0 lead off a blast past Henrik Lunqvist, but later he tooketh away when he made a bonehead backhand clear off the glass right to Scott Gomez, who fed the puck to Chris Drury to make it 1-1. Later, Blake Comeau missed the net with a shot on the PK and for some ridiculous reason Bruno Gervais pinched in deep for a scoring attempt. During a PK?? Come on Bruno. That made it 2-1 and the Islanders couldn't get the equalizer.

More interesting was watching Joey MacDonald go down with a groin injury 5 minutes into the game. He was relieved by Yann Danis, playing only his 4th game of the season. Mike Dunham, now the Islanders goaltending coach, reportedly would have been the emergency replacement had anything happened to Danis. Dunham has not played in the NHL since March of 2007.

Even more interesting than that, it was reported shortly before the game by Newsday that the Islanders have been in contact with former goaltender Wade Dubielewicz and he could possibly get signed to a one way deal to help MacDonald finish the season. Dubielewicz was recently bought out of his contract with Ak Bars Kazan of the KHL, the same team prospect Kirill Petrov play for.

Dubie is reportedly in contact with two other teams. My guess is one of the other two teams could St. Louis.

Yes, there are 39 games remaining on the season, but it seems now that the Islanders only threat in the Tavares race are Atlanta who are now 5 points ahead of the Islanders and Ottawa, who are 6 points ahead after beating Carolina tonight. It would be nice to see Dubielewicz come back and possibly challenge for a job next season, but hopefully not at the expense of Tavares. Personally, I'd rather see the Islanders sign someone like Craig Anderson over the summer as he will be a free agent.

What this means though for the rest of the season is that Rick DiPietro is apparently close to having his season shut down after getting into only 5 games the year.

The Islanders made a minor deal today with Atlanta, acquiring 2004 Hobey Baker winner Junior Lessard from Atlanta in exchange for D Brett Skinner. This is primarily a Bridgeport deal. Don't look into it anymore than that. In fact, Garth Snow has made a deal like this during this exact week of January each of the last 3 seasons (last year he dealt Darryl Bootland for Matt Keith and the year before he traded Matt Koalska for Tomas Malec). Maybe Lessard can find his scoring touch for the Sound Tigers and make them stronger for a playoff run.

Once again, I have a college update from this past weekend:

Jase Weslosky: He played very well last Friday night in a 3-1 win over UMD. He faced a ton of shots. Weslosky has a very wide stance but uses his pads well. He has very good reflexes and gets from side to side very quickly. I think he has a future as a pro and could possibly make a good backup one day in the NHL. He's probably the only drafted goaltender the Islanders have that has a future in the pros. Right now he's a junior. I will get another look at him this weekend when he faces Minnesota.

Jason Gregoire: This kid is a diamond in the rough. He's been great everywhere he's played. Two years ago he was the MVP of the USHL. He is having a great sophomore season at North Dakota. Friday night he scored the game winning overtime goal against Minnesota and added another one in a 7-1 drubbing of the Gophers Saturday night. Over the weekend he had 4 points and was awarded with WCHA player of the week honors. This kid is going to be a fan favorite one day for the Islanders.

David Toews: He scored a goal and had an assist against the Gophers Saturday night. The freshman is a very good player along the boards. He's obviously not offensively gifted as his brother, but he will surprise some people with his offensive play. Not a slouch offensively.

Aaron Ness: after his big weekend in the Dodge Classic, Ness along with his entire Gopher team were pretty quiet of the weekend as the #3 Minnesota team was clobbered both nights by the Sioux.

And now I want to finish with a commentary...

I am getting sick of reading certain other commentaries about Tavares not being in the same class as Sidney Crosby because Crosby is at the level of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. First of all, Crosby should not be mentioned in the same breath as those two guys. Those two players put up unbelievable numbers every season. Crosby right now isn't even the best player in his team.

Maybe the instant impact of Tavares won't get us the Lighthouse Project done and maybe some Nassau County officials have never heard of him as some other blogger has pointed out, but Rome wasn't built in a day. What I said was Tavares will renew interest in the team and more fans will come out to see him play, further raising awareness.

Update: I forgot to mention that last weekend I also watched Rhett Rahkshani of Denver once again. He scored an empty netter in a 3-1 win over Michigan Tech. Once again he was impressive. His coach said Rahkshani has "sick hands". It would be interesting to see if maybe he would be willing to forego his senior year at Denver and sign with the Islanders. He's arguably already Denver's best player. Great skater, great will and everywhere on the ice.

Prospect Scouting; Silly Done?

I had an opportunity to see some college games this weekend. I watched the DU Cup and the final was between Denver and BU. Here's what I saw:

Corey Trivino: I would never judge a player on just one game, but he only handled the puck a couple times. He's a freshman on a team with 13 NHL draft picks, so he's not one of the go to guys right now. I believe this is a transition year for him. But, the couple times he did handle the puck he showed some good puckhandling and he's got good size.

Rhett Rakhshani: This kid is going to be an Islander in 2 years (maybe see some part time duty the year after next). I was very impressed. He's as good as any Islanders college recruit that has graduated to the NHL. He scored a nifty goal in the semifinal on the shootout and in the final he stole a clearing pass off the boards, rushed in for a shot and then put in the rebound. Looked good.

Matt Gilroy: I watched him and yes, he's NHL calibre. Can do everything well. Scored a goal on the power play. He's BU's captain. I say sign him. He's another good mobile puck moving d-man.

Aaron Ness: I watched his 2 games over the weekend in the Dodge Holiday Classic. He was awesome against Brown & Northeastern. Named the tournament MVP. Scored his first collegiate goal. Again, a good mobile puck mover. Good defensively but very offensive minded. I know he was upset about not getting named to the U.S. Team. He should be there next year.

WJC's:

David Ullstrom: The Swede had the best WJC's of the four Islanders playing in the tournament. He is described as the Swedish version of Kirill Petrov. He had a great game against Slovakia, rushed to the net and put in a rebound to spark their win.

Kirill Petrov: Was nonexistent. Hardly got any ice time. He's possibly been nursing injuries. Most alarming was he was the only Russian forward on the team not to record at least one point.

Blake Kessel: Ron Rolston played Kessel like an extra defenseman. Most of his ice time came in a 12-0 rout of Kazakhstan. Unfortunately for Blake, he took the penalty against Canada that sparked a comeback by John Tavares and the team in red.

Jyri Niemi: Did not get the opportunity to see him play but Finland had a really poor showing this year. He did score 2 goals and had 3 points. One thing I did find out is that Niemi has three younger brothers: Pyry, Jimi & Pete. Pyry is a small forward currently playing for Finland's under-17 team.

Other Possible Islanders

My views have still not changed about how much the Islanders need John Tavares. But I did get my first look at Victor Hedman and yes he does make the decision a little tougher. I once heard him described as Frankenstein on skates. He's also been described as a Chris Pronger type. His size is amazing but he doesn't like the rough style game so he's not like Pronger in that sense. But that isn't a bad thing. He's still a dominating d-man and possibly without the tendency for dumb penalties. Basically, and I am not making direct comparisons here, but drafting one or two this year is either going to get you your Bryan Trottier or Denis Potvin calibre player. Building blocks....franchise players.

Players who also impressed me: Sweden's Magnus Svensson-Paajarvi is a top five pick, Canada's Ryan Ellis is going to be a 5-15 pick and is a puck moving wizard, Jordan Schroeder could be top 5, definitely top 10. And...Garth Snow should look into the availability of Slovakian forward Tomas Tatar because this guy, along with superman human puck stopper Jaroslav Janus, was the star of that nations win over the U.S. and good fight against Sweden.

More Scouting....

I had the opportunity to watch some Minnesota High School Hockey this past week. Yes, I said High School. The level of HS hockey in Minnesota is very high. The best senior every year is named Mr. Hockey, an award won last year by Ness and the previous year by Ryan McDonagh.

There are three division: Bronze, Silver and Gold. I just have to mention this one kid I saw playing defense for a school called Mahtomedi named Ben Marshall. What's amazing about him is he's only 15, so he's probably not eligible for the draft until at least 2011, but he's already committed to the Minnesota Gophers for 2011-12 as a sophomore. He's smallish, but he's super fast. He can skate end to end and get back quickly. He's like a new age d-man, small but extremely mobile in the mold of Ness, Gilroy or even Canada's Ryan Ellis. If you are interested, read this article.

Now to some Islanders hockey....

It's a shame Richard Park was not named one of the three stars last week after recording 6 points in the two game set over the weekend. I guess Rick Nash (9 points), Brian Rafalski (6 points) and Cam Ward (3-0-0) were just a little bit better.

Rumors are swirling that Mike Sillinger's career may be over after attempting to come back from his hip surgery. That is too bad and would be a significant loss for the Islanders. Hopefully, the Islanders will be smart here and if Sillinger does in fact decide to retire he will be offered an assistant coaching job with the team. He's a very smart hockey guy and his knowledge about faceoffs is one of the best ever in the NHL. If he can stick around and teach Josh Bailey & the other young guys how to take some faceoffs that would be excellent.

Congrats to Doug Weight for reaching 1,000 points. Unfortunately for the betterment of the Islanders future he will have to go for picks. Sorry Doug. Hopefully you will change your mind about possibly coming back next year. Though if Tavares is in the lineup will we need Weight??

John Tavares: How Bad do the Isles Need Him?

BAD! Never has anything been more obvious.

Remember the days of the once glorious Islanders led by such names as Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, Denis Potvin, Billy Smith? Long gone are the players brought to Long Island by the once great GM Bill Torrey. Their legacy does live on with the four straight Cups they won us, but with each passing year (almost 25) the Islanders become more and more forgotten as much to the fans dismay they have become the doormat of the NHL. And that is in more ways than just on the ice.

With the Winter Classic just recently having been played at Wrigley Field, talk now turns to who will host the next two annual events. The obvious hosts are New York and Boston. If you do enough research on the web, you would find out that the Islanders actually tried to get an outdoor game going at Yankee Stadium, which is soon to be replaced. If you know enough about the situation you would be aware of the fact that even though the Islanders initiated the idea, they are not the NHL's choice to play in the game if it were to ever happen. The consensus seems to be Rangers versus Boston.

Why? Well some site the Islanders have no star power. If Tavares does find his way to the Islanders, that would change. An Islanders/Rangers Winter Classic could easily be possible by 2011 if the NHL was willing to wait a year and give 2010's matchup to Boston, say versus Toronto.

Basically, John Tavares would get the Islanders the Winter Classic.

What else would change should the Islanders win Tavares? Well, for one....if Long Islanders are truly passionate about their team, then this phenom alone should begin to sell the building out on a nightly basis. We're talking about a possible Crosby or Ovechkin type of player, a player the Islanders have not quite seen since 1986. Yes, the Islanders have had some nice players since then like Pat LaFontaine, Pierre Turgeon and Zigmund Palffy. But were any of those players ever named to the end of season first or second all star team? Bossy was the last player to do it for the Islanders in 1986.

What else? Oh, he would get the Islanders on national TV possibly twice as much as the team currently receives. There would be more revenue for Mr. Wang, who is losing money by the boat load. More players would want to come play on Long Island. But that is not the biggest thing Tavares would bring to the Islanders.

John Tavares would bring the Lighthouse Project to fruition. He may be the only thing that will get it done. Tavares may be the only one to raise interest in the team again which will eventually light a fire under Nassau County to finally allow the project to get done.

So basically it's like this for the Islanders: John Tavares = better team, no longer doormat, Winter Classic, Lighthouse Project & new building....ANDDD, hopefully someday...the Stanley Cup.

Without him, these things may never happen.