Islanders News: Tavares courting, coach eyeing, mock drafting, pre-scheduling

It’s a Saturday. Last day for those “coach in place this week” speculative reports to come true. Next week is a whole new week, with the draft not until the end.

Islanders Reading

• A few more updates on the Tavares Trending yesterday. Dan has you covered at the top of this post (after the awesome art). I love how the arena situation is treated either as a positive (Belmont!) or a negative (aww, two arenas) depending on which direction people think Tavares is leaning. [LHH]
• We talked about buyout candidates again, focusing on Ladd (no can do), Greiss (can, but pointless) and Clutterbuck (can, possibly warranted). [LHH]
• The Isles announced their preseason schedule and you can have your Phil {nyuk nyuk} [Isles | LHH]
• The chances of each first-round pick being traded. The Isles would move them, but rivals know Lou will demand a high price. [The Athletic]
• Some of those picks were traded in our SB Nation NHL Mock Draft, which we wrapped up here with the 31st overall pick. [LHH]
• Isles prospect Ben Mirageas is on the initial U.S. summer showcase camp invite list. He plays at Providence, Lou’s old haunt. [Friars]
• In case you missed this late add yesterday, a fun interview with the retiring P.A. Parenteau where he admits he didn’t get along with Scott Gordon or Patrick Roy and was partly responsible for his departure from Colorado, but Jack Capuano and John Tortorella were among the coaches who believed in him. [The Athletic]
• Also added to yesterday’s roundup on this news, but yes more media citing conversations between Camp Tavares and the Islanders. [NHL | Sportsnet] Is it just Pat Brisson getting rivals primed to make bigger offers? [SNY] Because...
• ...You know what the best part of free agency is? Other teams using media members to convey to pending free agents, “Hey, wait until the window, we have things to offer you.”

This feels like needless fire-stoking: the Caps just paraded and coaches don’t get a flirtation period like free agent players do. But sure, we’ll play along and dream:

Elsewhere

• Then there’s using the media to tell fans they’re interested in free agents they will never land. Blues, Bruins among those announcing they are interested in Ilya Kovalchuk. [NHL]
• In fact, the Bruins would like Kovalchuk, they’d like to trade back into the first round of the draft, they’d like another Cup too if that’s not too much to ask. [NHL]
• TRADE: The Canadiens have traded Alex Galchenyuk, their best offseason trade chip, to the Arizona Coyotes for Max Domi. Boy, that was a mistake. “all [Bergevin] got in return was a player who scored nine goals — four of them into an empty net.” [HEOTP]
• The Flames find themselves not picking until #105 as the price for trading for Hamonic and Smith. [NHL]
• If Tavares stays with the Islanders, that launches Stastny’s market value to the highest bidder, no? [Sportsnet]
• Winning the Calder Cup usually opens NHL opportunities for coaches like Sheldon Keefe. [Sportsnet]
• Continuing an ugly and bizarre saga, Mike Hoffman and his fiance insist she had nothing to do with all the cyber-harassment of Erik Karlsson’s wife. [Ottawa Citizen]
• The latest trade bait board has Hoffman dropping, understandably. [TSN]
• Here are 10 non-Ryan Pulock RFAs set for big paydays. [THN]
• Ovechkin and Co. continue their party, take the Stanley Cup around to let fans touch it. [NHL]
• Ken Dryden calls out Gary Bettman and the owners, again, over their willful ignorance about head injuries. [The Athletic]
• The Panthers will celebrate their 25th anniversary with these snazzy iconography and I am old. [Sports Logos]
• Achariya interviews Katie Strang, who was Newsday’s Isles beatwriter for a brief time and now has profiled sexual assault victims in the U.S. Gymnastics scandal. [Raw Charge]
• Winter Classic it was not, but...the highest altitude game in history, in the Himalayas. [Guiness]
• I care about golf even less than I care about gambling and concussion-ball (I don’t say this to advocate — to each one’s own — just to let you know us oddballs do exist), but that NHL ref missed the cut but had a good time at the U.S. Open. [NHL]