It’s apparent day after day and year after year that the Islanders operate in their own bubble, and the surrounding world of the NHL has little impact on how they operate. Sometimes, that’s a positive. Often, it’s not.
It’s an outlook and an attitude they created out of the idea that they get no respect. It’s a worldview — a league-view, if you will — cultivated by general manager Garth Snow, who made the all-too-big jump from backup goalie to neophyte general manager in 2006 at the insistence of an enthusiastic and inexperienced owner, Charles Wang.
Snow said Wednesday morning he was “crossing my fingers” for over a month, hoping Doug Weight would accept the job as the Islanders’ full-time head coach. When Snow’s fingers first crossed, Weight had spent 20 games as a NHL head coach. Can you imagine any other organization disregarding all other possible outside candidates for the hope that such an inexperienced person would accept the job?
Even Weight needed time to think it over, showing he’s likely the one in the organization with the best sense of perspective. He needed to sit down with owners Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin, now through their first tumultuous year in majority control, before finally saying yes.
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“It was important to me to meet with all of my bosses face-to-face and talk about things,” Weight said on a conference call that announced his new full-time gig. “I believe in that communication and that clarity, as do they.”
It might turn out to be a prescient decision to keep Weight, who took over for the fired Jack Capuano on Jan. 17 and led the Islanders on a closing run of 24-12-4 while rising from last in the conference to missing the playoffs by one point. His players were upset with having failed Capuano, and without that inspiration, does Weight have the same success?
It’s an unanswerable question, just as it is to think of what would have ensued had Snow took some time to seriously inquire about the services of Darryl Sutter or Lindy Ruff or Gerard Gallant. He didn’t. He made up his mind a month before the season ended, and he said the final decision was made with the consent of ownership.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” Snow said. “There needs to be a comfort level on every level of an organization. Whether it’s a big free-agent signing or a decision like we’ve made over the last two days on a head coach, I think ownership in every organization in every sport must be involved.”
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Well, ownership also is involved in searching for someone to add to the front office who very possibly could be in charge of all hockey operations, who could be Snow’s boss. Snow admitted as much. That would absolutely shake up their insulated organization, much more than when they recently had George McPhee as a sounding board for a few years before he left to take over the expansion Vegas franchise.
If Ledecky and Malkin want to change the organization for the better, they need to abandon the us-against-the-world mentality. It’s a philosophy that has led Snow to make some decisions that could kindly be described as quizzical, and to put up this wall in defense against his ghostly critics, who arrive almost as infrequently as do playoff victories.
“When the team has success and wins, everything’s great,” Snow said. “When the team loses, there are going to be bullets and arrows flying, and that’s part of the gig.”
That Snow thinks he has taken a lot of criticism is a perfect example of lack of perspective. How do you think his 11-year track record would play in Toronto or Montreal or even just across the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan? The answer: It wouldn’t be an 11-year track record. How about his explanation that he undercut his NHL team this season by sending goalie Jaroslav Halak down to the minors because there was an injury to somebody named Christopher Gibson?
This might have been a good day for the Islanders, and having Weight as the head coach might help in trying to sign John Tavares to a new contract extension this summer. But Tavares deserves his money in the context of his place in the league, not in the context of the isolated Islanders universe. If they lowball him, he should walk.
And if he leaves, the bubble will burst, and the remnants will be there for Garth Snow to carry on his way out.