I haven't done one of these "LHink" dumps in a while, but there just isn't much going on, and I can't be arsed with Canada's Olympic orientation camp beyond its effect on the health of a division rival's star. As the season nears, we'll do this more often, with game reactions and theories from around the Islanders blogs and paper(s), plus other league stuff. For now, news and thoughts and notes about Islanders and beyond:
-
Coyotes: Balsillie re-bids. NHL cobbles a bid itself. Reinsdorf drops out. All part of a not-too-shocking script, but a page-turning script nonetheless. The NHL looks (understatement alert!) a bit crazy here, but consider this: Have you ever been in a protracted legal/nuisance battle with someone? Wouldn't you have paid a lot to make them go away? I know I would have -- and nearly paid with my
JagrCzech National Team jersey. - There are a lot of ugly buyouts on the books, but Yashin's -- a high of $4.8 million on the books next year -- is still the worst. And yet, somehow, the best. [THN/John Grigg]
- Sweet Puck Daddy Q&A with Nikita Filatov, who we will always link to Josh Bailey (and extra picks).
- Nick on Joseph Mondello and the Lighthouse Project. [Let There be Light(house)]
- If you missed 'em or didn't see the updates in my DiPietro post, DiPietro responded via Newsday (welcome to the drama, Katie Strang), and Botta responded to the response. (If I wasn't clear before, I agree that Snow telling us what's going on beats ... not doing so. I've just moved on with this particular issue.)
- Botta also had our, what, 23rd goalie on the depth chart(?) flunking out of St. Cloud and transferring to upstart Bemidji. (Gesundheit.) The kid's replacement at St. Cloud sounds OK, though.
- This is a few days old but ... a good view on the character of Dan(n)y Heatley from Atlanta, courtesy of the Falconer.
- This is older still but more relevant(ish) to us: Lowetide's very positive view of former Islander (and recent comment topic here) Denis Grebeshkov.
- Mike Chen at Battle of California on the weird Patrick Marleau no-trade report and Doug Wilson's response.
And a fine morning or afternoon to you. Discussion continues in the previous trade spec, Snow rebuild FanPost, and DiPietro and goaltender threads. (
Non-pushy, actually helpful note: If you like to lurk but not comment -- which is absolutely fine -- creating a userid/login still helps you see which posts are new and how many new comments each post/FanPost has since you last visited. So you can create a profile and get the enhanced features while still not being "seen." Same applies for all SBN sites you "join." The SBN overlords aren't harvesting your digits and don't nudge you to "join" for any other reason than it helps you participate in the various communities when the mood strikes. I nudge you to do it because when I joined my first SBN site after years of lurking, I thought, "Jesus, this is TONS more useful.")