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Chance Harper: Mayhem on Long Island
Mayhem on Long Island
By: Chance Harper
NHL news isn't exactly burning up newswires and headlines right now with the baseball season winding down and the football season cranking up. But the Islanders are trying to push pucks into print and onto the minds of fans.
If you’re like me, you probably took note of some web headlines concerning the New York Islanders’ signing of goaltender Rick DiPietro last week, then moved on to other important business. After all, those Eva Longoria pictures aren’t just going to show up on your screen by themselves. But eventually your eye caught the phrase "15-year deal" in the teaser, and you were pulled into another tale of the Isles’ quirky front office.
The monster contract isn’t really notable for its yearly sum. The $4.5 million per season might be a little much for a netminder of DiPietro’s current caliber, but it’s not out-and-out ridiculous. What is so shocking is the length of the deal, 15 years. A decade and a half. Most current NHLers will be retired by the time the contract’s final year is reached.
DiPietro won’t be retired though, you can count on that. Not when he would be making $4.5 million as a 40-year-old goaltender who could (and likely will) be well beyond his prime. For him, it’s incredible job security. He’s going to be paid that sum every year for the rest of his career, whether he’s good or bad, whether the team’s good or bad, and whether a new hotshot goalie comes up from the farm system and takes away his job.
And if things go sour on Long Island (and we can’t imagine how that could happen, it seems like such a solid place to work), there’s no way to send DiPietro packing to another team. Can you imagine the Islanders’ GM (Garth Snow, or potential successor Wade Dubielewicz) calling up another team and asking if they’re interested in DiPietro? What would the pitch be? Ricky only has 10 years and $45 million left on his contract?
Of course, with hockey’s labor situation always ready to explode we could go through one or two (or three) more collective bargaining agreements over the next 15 years. And that could result in everyone’s contract getting scaled back again, or a cap being retroactively put on multi-year deals, or the league closing up shop and moving en masse to Europe with the Lisbon Islanders getting off the hook for DiPietro’s big deal.
Or, Isles owner Charles Wang could know what he’s doing. Maybe DiPietro emerges as a Top 3 goaltender this season, plays at a high level for at least another decade, and becomes a bargain as salaries escalate dramatically. That’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, DiPietro is just a decent goalie on the ice, and an albatross on the books.
One thing this contract did, though, was to get everyone to stop talking about how the Islanders fired Neil Smith less than two months after they hired him to be the team’s general manager. Wang had commented that he and Smith had philosophical differences on how the team’s business model should work (apparently, that model was to lock up players through 2021, then sit back and relax). Snow then retired from his role as DiPietro’s backup to don a suit and tie and do Wang’s bidding as the team’s GM.
Snow is now tasked with the job of getting New York back into the playoffs which they missed last season by 14 points. The Isles finished with a 36-40-6 record in 2005/06, good for only 12th place in the Eastern Conference, and 4th place (ahead of just the Pittsburgh Penguins) in the Atlantic Division. Longtime GM Mike Milbury was then shoved aside in favor of Smith, with Ted Nolan given the head coach’s job for this year.
Now Smith is gone too, but Nolan remains to deal with the Islanders’ problems on the ice. There won’t be a goaltender controversy at least, although DiPietro will be expected to improve on last year’s 3.02 GAA (which ranked him 31st in the league) and .900 save percentage (26th). Veteran keeper Mike Dunham was brought into camp as well, and he’ll get a chance to take the backup job away from the untested Dubielewicz.
New York’s defense, largely overhauled last season, ended up being one of the worst in the conference. Additions Brendan Witt and Tom Poti bring defensive and offensive talents, respectively, to the blueline, but neither is a star. Veteran Alexei Zhitnik and Chris Campoli return from last year’s corps, and Bruno Gervais should get more time. If they can improve as a group they should be able to help DiPietro reduce his numbers.
Up front, Miroslav Satan and former ridiculous-contract poster child Alexei Yashin are still the top threats, with Jason Blake, Trent Hunter, and Shawn Bates the supporting cast. The team is also hoping that Robert Nilsson has a breakout season and emerges as a first-line scorer. And you know Nilsson has incentive to do that. Get into Wang’s good books and you could score a super-multi-year contract and coast to retirement.
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Originally Posted by SBRforum Staff
