Bits: Islanders Training Camp is Really Close

Four days from now, Nino Niederreiter and Ryan Strome and Kirill Kabanov and Calvin de Haan and Matt Donovan will again skate on Nassau [gloriously unsponsored] Veterans Memorial Coliseum ice. After a long summer, that's pretty cool.

They and a bushel of other Islanders prospects you've been eying will break the seal on the 2011-12 season with a one-week rookie camp. The vets come in the following Friday, Sept. 16, for physicals. Then it is on like Andrey Pedan.

I'm sure you're so excited you'll get a new tattoo. Perhaps "Rakh the Casbah" or "I Go Mikko for Kosko-Pucks."

Islanders Links [updated with additions]

• Did we mention it's hockey time? A few observations on Brenden Kichton and John Persson in this Prospect Park update. More from him here.
• GOOD CAUSE: Meet Michael Grabner, Matt Moulson and Butch Goring's wardrobe tonight to benefit Jake Wisniewski, a young graphics coordinator on MSG Network broadcasts who underwent a successful double lung transplant this summer as part of his battle with cystic fibrosis. Details at SNY-PB here.
• The Blueshirt Baterers take a look at the Atlantic Division. I'm not sure why people assume Brian Rolston will skate with John Tavares, but it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
• Top 10 European prospects for the 2011-12 NHL season at Hockey Independent includes Nino Niederreiter. Think he's got 17 goals in him as a 19-year-old rookie?
  
• Dee with her second part from Jack Capuano. "The time is now." Part one, if you missed it, was here.
• NYI FYI on Pandolfo.
• Looking at Team USA U-20 camp, with a brief blurb on Scott Mayfield.
• I didn't even pay attention, but apparently there is some uproar about the tattoo thing with the Islanders? You know it's about the Islanders if people get up in arms over what for any other team would become just one of those curiosities.
• One day Micheal Haley will show NHL12 how to spell Micheal Haley.
• NEW [updated from comments]: Joe Conte on the areener issue, and how the Islanders are not done in Nassau.

General Hockey

• Yeah, it's the NHL's fault: City of Vancouver blames NHL for riots, embarrasses itself - Puck Daddy and Vancouver city council rips NHL over Stanley Cup riots; Do they have a point? | ProHockeyTalk and "why not hold NHL responsible?" by mc79hockey ... still more on this from the Globe & Mail in Toronto
• Speculating on the next CBA. More on that from a Vancouver columnist, so take it with the tiniest grain of salt electron microscopes could possibly isolate.
• On the NHL/CHL agreement that brings so many Nino-watchers grief.
  
• Earl Sleek is having fun with SBN hockey logos. Got any toonful ideas for LHH?
  
• Noodles McLennan dishes on some crazy fan experiences.
• Top 50 Fantasy Players from the nhl.com. What, no Jagr? No Islanders, either.
• Time-lapse look at the full corporatization transformation of Madison Square Garden.
  
• Something very involved with graphs and such about two-way forwards, which I will read when I have a moment to breathe.
• And now: Challenging the Hockey Statisticians - Part 1 - Matchsticks and Gasoline

Question of the Day

Fill in the blank: