In the end, Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello stuck with his guys
New York Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello. Credit: Jim McIsaac
OTTAWA, Ontario
For a few hours, it appeared the Great Reset had arrived at last.
The Islanders had traded Brock Nelson, arguably their best player now and one of their best players this century, in a forward-looking midnight trade with Colorado.
They offloaded a veteran free agent-to-be for a promising young forward in Calum Ritchie — the 27th overall pick in the 2023 draft — and a first-round selection in the 2026 or ’27 draft.
It seemed Lou Lamoriello finally had heeded the many calls to reshape a slowing, aging roster that has been running on grit and fumes for years now.
Heck, I even wrote a column on Friday morning hailing the dawn of a new era.
Then reality struck.
Turns out, Lou still is Lou, again opting at the trade deadline to stick with his guys and see if they can sneak into the playoffs and do some damage.
He offered Nelson, who turns 34 in October — the same month Lamoriello turns 83 — an extension, but Nelson turned it down, forcing the general manager’s hand, lest he get nothing for him at season’s end.
But what about everyone else?
Unrestricted free agent-to-be Kyle Palmieri? He might have landed a first-round pick, too, in what has been a strong sellers’ market.
But the 34-year-old instead has been offered a contract extension of his own and is going nowhere.
Jean-Gabriel Pageau, whom the Hurricanes are believed to have coveted? Nope. He stays.
Anders Lee, another potential trade chip? Nope. The captain will carry on.
Pretty much everyone will carry on. That is Lamoriello’s way, a path that seems increasingly at odds with logic and the sports world’s actuarial tables.
The guy deserves credit in perpetuity for being at the helm of the second-greatest era in franchise history.
Facts are facts: The Islanders have made the playoffs five times in the past six seasons, twice reaching the semifinals, with a core of generally likable, hard-working players who were around so long, they seemed like hockey family.
They even opened a spiffy new arena in Elmont, their third home of the 2020s.
It has been a blast compared with most of the team’s history, an entertaining ride that helped get hockey fans through the darkest, sports-challenged days of the COVID-19 era.
But time is up.
Yes, the Islanders were only four points out of a postseason spot when Friday’s trade deadline arrived, but there were four teams ahead of them with the same aspiration, and their body of work screams mediocrity.
The most frustrating part of all this is that Islanders fans would have understood if Lamoriello had gone into an aggressive reset. Many have been begging for it.
The team has tickets to sell, so a rebuild is tricky in business terms. But living on the fringes of playoff relevance is not a viable alternative.
This sort of thing is not unheard of in sports.
The Rangers announced a rebuild in 2018, stumbled for a few years and now have been in the conference finals two of the past three years.
Even the lordly Yankees sold off assets at the trade deadline in 2016 and missed the playoffs that year, but only once since.
Trust the process!
To look at the bright side, Lamoriello’s stubbornness likely means the Islanders will remain competitive in the short term.
Mathew Barzal, Bo Horvat and Ilya Sorokin all are in their primes and under long-term deals, and there is promising talent elsewhere on the roster.
But is it enough to eventually hoist the Cup? There is no recent evidence of that.
The time is long past due for majority owner Scott Malkin to explain his vision for the franchise and his unwavering faith in Lamoriello. The fact that he stays in the shadows publicly is fine most of the time, but not all of the time.
Back to Nelson for a moment: He was all class, a guy who leaves with the fourth-most games played in Islanders history at 901, with a fitting finale on Tuesday night, when he had a goal and an assist in a 3-2 upset of the Jets at UBS Arena.
Nelson deserved to go out in style. Fans deserved to see him not go out alone.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
