Free Agency Open Thread: Please don’t do anything dumb

Here is your Free Agency Frenzy 2017 open thread. Things become official at noon today. Two things to remember:

• Be respectful of others in the comments. Disagreement is fine. Personal attacks are not. It’s just sports.
• As I said in the Bits post comments, if you’re posting a tweet VERIFY THE TWEETER’S IDENTITY BEFORE POSTING IT Look for the blue checkmark, read their name and handle carefully (no B0BMacKenzees, please) and check the number of followers they have. It takes less than 30 seconds and can save everyone a ton of energy and grief.

Both TSN and Sportsnet want you to subscribe to their services in order to watch their live streams today, which kinda sucks. If we’ll have to deal with Twitter, at the very least, you can keep an eye on the following accounts:

• Bob McKenzie: https://twitter.com/TSNBobMcKenzie
• Elliotte Friedman: https://twitter.com/FriedgeHNIC
• Pierre LeBrun: https://twitter.com/PierreVLeBrun
• Darren Dreger: https://twitter.com/DarrenDreger
• and, of course, our own https://twitter.com/stapenewsday

As for the Islanders, don’t expect any big names except for perhaps Justin Williams, who suddenly popped up on the radar yesterday. There will probably be a lot of minor league signings, what with an entire ECHL roster to fill out. There’s always the possibility of a trade or two, also.

But, like Christmas, today isn’t the only day Garth Snow can go shopping. In fact, he might be better off just sitting today out and waiting to pick up some big box items later on.

Some early pre-noon news (say...how does that happen? Parties aren’t allowed to discuss term/salary until noon? SHOCK.):