Islanders Bits: Oh Captain, My Schwingerkönig

Newsday's Arthur Staple, who has been hinting at such things, broke last night [FanShot] that the New York Islanders would name their new captain today. Many expect it will be Mark Streit -- because of his age and role, and because Staple has been hinting that, too.

Because we are the way we are, we'll call him the Schwingerkönig -- all because Swiss native Francesca taught us something new in her post on Nino Niederreiter's summer. If we're wrong, we're wrong. But for the love of Mötley Crüe, since when did celebration of umlauts ever hurt anyone?

More Islanders and hockey news-like substances -- from realignment to training camp to Jets hysteria -- after the jump.

Islanders News

Shield your eyes, here's Frans Nielsen talking (toward the end) about Jack Capuano's system -- some implicit damning of pre-Capuano systems, perhaps? Video with Cappy and Matt Moulson also appear there.

• Apparently the affiliation with ECHL Kalamazoo is no more. Press release here.
  
• Kevin Poulin is ready. Look out.
  
• The funniest moment from yesterday: Discovering Blake Kessel's geocities-ish freshman year website.
• Ryan Strome's Niagara team will be good even without Strome and Dougie Hamilton. (But they'll ultimately have both.)
  
• More on implementing Jack Capuano's system.
• Interview with a North Dakota beat writer on Brock Nelson's development.
  
• From the weekend, but here's Jay Pandolfo with realistic expectations of his training camp invite.
• Fantasy talk: The Dobber digs on Nino and the youngsters, with not a lot of faith in PAP.
• If you're on the Twitter, you should be up on the hashtags. #thereshallbenoFransbutFrans
• Paul Mara's agent would like you to know he thinks there's interest from some teams. But Mara won't just go to anybody, he needs to be wooed.
• Are you a Brooklyn fan? (And by that I mean an Isles fan based in Brooklyn.) There's a group for getting together to watch games. They're on the Facebook, dontcha know.
• This has been talked about already around here, but here are some Hockey Prospectus accounts of Matt Donovan, Kirill Kabanov and Ryan Strome from rookie camp. For fun, they also discuss Dylan McIlrath.
• And here's the link to the Hockey Prospectus Annual, which is about 1/5 the price of a THN subscription and just slightly more informative.

NHL News

• Here are some rule changes and explanations delivered to players.
  
• Marc Staal's concussion issues stem from last year. That's not really good.
• So this will surprise you, but Atlantapeg fans are happy to have a team called the Jets back.
  
• NHL Realignment: I have long been in favor of a four-division setup, based on time zones. The NHL might be as well: nhl.com | Puck Daddy
• Sean Bergenheim thinks he'll keep up that unbelievable playoff form.

You know, it's easy to grin / when your ship comes in / and you've got the stock market beat / But a man worthwhile / is a man who can smile / when ...hockey season is just around the freaking corner and there are preseason games Friday and Saturday and various other irrational reasons to write run-on sentences in child-like excitement because the season is very nearly upon us and stuff!