Last summer I was at a birthday party at a friend's house when I ran into a mutual friend who had formerly worked for the Islanders. We talked about the draft, John Tavares, and what the future held.
He felt the hockey operations were in good hands. Garth Snow, Scott Gordon, Ryan Jankowski, Bryan Trottier, and Ken Morrow had the team pointed in the right direction, and with young talent like Kyle Okposo, Tavares, Josh Bailey, and Frans Nielsen, the future looked bright.
"But they have other problems," he said.
I thought he was referring specifically to the Coliseum and the awful lease agreement that the team had struggled with for so long, and the mired-in-political-molasses Lighthouse Project, which was seemingly going nowhere. He agreed that those were big issues, but that the real problem was the owner himself, Charles Wang.
Remember, this was a former employee who was happy to have gotten out of there, so there may have been an axe or two to grind. But looking back at the 2009-2010 season, which is just about over, I thought about our summer meeting, and it's becoming increasingly clear that when it comes to the Islanders, there are really tw ...
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Article written by Michael Gasparino
Charles Wang’s Islanders: A Tale of Two Teams
April 6th, 2010 by Michael Gasparino Leave a reply »
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