Offseason Review: New York Islanders

Now that the dust has settled on a wild NHL offseason, let's take a look at how each team did in regards to drafting and free-agent signings. Today, we'll look at the New York Islanders.

The Islanders have now made it to the Conference Finals in back-to-back seasons, losing both times to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who would then go on to win the Stanley Cup. While initially considered a dark horse team, the Isles are no longer underdogs and have joined the ranks of Vegas, Colorado, and the reigning champs Tampa Bay as legit Cup contenders. With that comes higher expectations from both fans and the league as a whole. Anything short of another Conference Finals appearance would be deemed a failure, and the reality is that for this team to improve, a Cup Final is the only option. As such, GM Lou Lamorello needed to decide how to play this offseason, whether to go out and bring in a big name, or stick with what has gotten him within one game of the Finals already. Let's see how things went in Long Island.

Free Agency:

The Isles made a trade a week before free agency opened, sending Nick Leddy Detroit for Richard Panik and a 2021 2nd-round pick. Panik is not exactly an offensive game-changer, he has only broken the 20-goal plateau once in his career, way back in 2016-2017, and has only scored over 30 points twice. He is most likely slotting in to the bottom 6 of this Islanders roster, and potentially get some PK time. The Isles also signed one of their top defenceman Adam Pelech to a team-friendly 8-year deal, which locks him down until he's 35. They also managed to offload the contract of Andrew Ladd onto the Coyotes, although they had to sacrifice a few draft picks to do it and got nothing in return.

Beyond that, crickets. There is a belief that Lamorello has deals in place for Kyle Palmieri, Casey Cizikas, and Travis Zajac, but as of writing this no official announcements have been made. To make matters (potentially) worse, the Islanders lost top 6 forward Jordan Eberle to Seattle in the expansion draft. There may be expectations on some of their young players to step in and fill that role - Oliver Wahlstrom for example - but if that doesn't pay off the Isles suddely have a much weaker right side, and that could hinder their chances of pushing into the final round of the playoffs.

Grade: C-; There is still time for Lamorello to sign his UFAs and complete his roster for next season, but as it stands right now this team is simply a weaker version of itself. Adding Richard Panik doesn't hurt, but it also doesn't fill the voids that will appear if more contracts aren't nailed down.

Draft:

The Isles had traded away their 1st-rounder this year in the deal that brought them Palmieri and Zajac from New Jersey, and had also lost their 2nd-rounder in the Andrew Ladd deal with Arizona, but managed to recoup a 2nd round pick from Detroit in their trade for Richard Panik. That pick became the Isles' first selection in the 2021 draft, and with it they chose Finnish forward Aatu Raty. Raty was projected as recently as last October to be a top pick in this draft, with some analysts having him listed as 1st overall. However, a bad season in Liiga saw his stock plummet dramatically, and he fell all the way to 52nd overall where the Islanders selected him. Raty is 6'2" and plays like it, driving the puck right up the middle of the ice and crashing it on net. He's not afraid to get physical and screen the opposing goalie if it means he can get a deflection on goal, and if given time to fire it off his wrist shot is extremely accurate, and extremely powerful. Other teams could have keyed on this facet of his game and started making sure he didn't get much time to shoot, which may have affected his scoring totals last season. We'll see if he can adapt his game to be more versatile, but the Isles may get lucky and end up with the star player many expected Raty would be. For what it's worth, Raty played on the Finnish U20 team at the International Junior tournament shortly after the draft, and scored 6 goals and 14 points in 6 games to lead all players. That certainly looks like a top prospect's point totals.

Following that, the Islanders 3rd round pick taken 93rd overall was Tristan Lennox, a goaltender for the Saginaw Spirit of the OHL. Lennox is a cerebral goaltender, very confident in his abilities and doesn't let opposing players rattle him or draw him out of position. He stays calm under pressure and a bad goal won't cause his concentration to falter. While his numbers as the starter for the Spirit last season don't jump off the page (3.63 GAA, .876sv%), he started 33 games and won 20 of them. If he can get his numbers up, there's some real potential here.

Grade: B; The Islanders haven't had a first-round pick in a couple years now, which makes it hard for fans to get overly excited about the Draft. However, the selection of Aatu Raty may serve as a solid stand-in for a top-10 selection, given that he was expected to be taken in that range not long ago. Couple that with the promise of a 19-year old goalie prospect like Lennox, and this year's group of Islanders prospects looks pretty good from here.

Overall grade: C+; There is still more work to be done for this Islanders roster to be considered complete, with a few UFAs waiting to put their names on paper so they can get to training camp. If that doesn't happen, this will have been an ugly offseason in Long Island, but the addition of a prospect like Raty will help lessen the blow.

What do you think about how the Islanders have handled this offseason?

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