History

I always have had mixed feelings on Charles Wang. He left Mike Milbury in charge far too long. The Town of Hempstead complained of an unwillingness to reduce the Lighthouse Project. Yet, later on, Wang and Kate Murray had met for lunch to have their principles hash out those differences. So no matter the ToH's public complaints, Charles tried to cross that divide. Which is why their failure to have it come to a vote would always let the blame fall on them instead of Charles. This was something Kate Murray, and then Anthony Santino failed to understand. Both toppled from their political trajectory since. Charles Wang was so loyal to Tom Suozzi that he did not answer Ed Mangano’s phone-calls for months. He was personal friends with Rick DiPietro and negotiated his longterm deal him...

It is probably not fair to Lou Lamoriello to blame him for not retaining John Tavares. After all, what organization shakes itself up when trying to retain their best player? Especially so late. I mean... if they were going to do it... do it as soon as the season ends. It was done months later. That would be on the Isles owners.  Sure, perhaps the team needed it. I’ll give you that. But ask yourself how many teams changed their GM and Coach when their franchise player is about to be a free agent? Yeah, exactly.  Furthermore... especially when that player has good relationships with those people. This seems ignored by just too many. He was very close with Doug Weight and liked Garth Snow. Plain fact.  I get that John Tavares is the enemy and many fans are bewil...

A GM who builds his team based on analytics best practices and drafts conducted by their Director of Analytics since 2006 is bound to piss off an old-time coach eventually. When the pressure built last season there were rumblings of a discord between Capuano and internal staff. There was also blowback from players on Capuano’s methods. Overall, most veteran players liked Jack Capuano, but they did not like some of the items coming from him as they struggled last season. We can only assume it wasn’t very pretty this season, as well. We saw the result of these as we called Cappy’s non-analytics moves as Cappylytics, which also helped sink his ship this season. The fact is that this fundamental split was shown when Cappy ran out of coach skill-set and options on h...

How did we get here?  Did we take a wrong left turn at Albuquerque?  The Isles season with Jack Capuano at the tiller should have been finished shortly after late October. The Isles had just blown another 3rd period, allowing the Penguins 3 goals and take the game. It was a text book Capuano fixture to his tenure, where a lack of poise … albeit with below average goaltending … blew a lead and then the game. Capuano was frustrated and angry. He was staring at a wall that he could not, and would not ever pass. He was out of solutions, expertise, and began to reflect that frustration back out. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, he blamed the lack of offense and chemistry thanks to GM Garth Snow’s offseason. He was resentful that he didn’t have any say in the...