Islanders owner Charles Wang and GM Mike Milbury feel pretty good about their team right now. And why shouldn’t they?
The Islanders go into tonight’s Coliseum game against the hated Leafs with a magic number of just five points to eliminate the No. 9 Rangers from the playoffs. Currently the No. 8 seed in the East for the final postseason position, the Isles can still move up, but it’s apparent that they will enter the tournament as one of the lower seeds.
That’s fine, according to Milbury, who wasn’t making any Stanley Cup guarantees yesterday over lunch with Wang and local writers. He says that the Islanders aren’t going to be a cakewalk for anyone, and while the Devils and Ottawa should be the favorites to come out of the East, there’s plenty of room for the other six teams to “do some damage.”
With an improved defense – which he considers the best in the league – and with Alexei Yashin firing on all cylinders, Milbury said, “I can’t believe that anybody’s licking their chops” to play his team.
The Islanders have come a long way in the last few months, as has No. 79, who met with Milbury and Wang during the darkest days of his season-long slump in what have been described as “strong, truthful conversations.”
Yashin seems to have shaken the curse off his precious sticks over the last month and the days of the finger pointing and resentment from some of his teammates are long gone. Yashin, in the second year of a 10-year contract, has 15 points in the last nine games and nobody seems to be asking, “Where’s the beef?” anymore, Milbury said.
“It’s a much better atmosphere than it was a few months ago,” he said. “Now that he’s putting up huge numbers, I think that it’s not a coincidence that he’s changed the other parts of his game. He’s more focused, more intense, and more improved at both ends of the ice.”
Among other things, Wang said that the Islanders have a solid financial foundation behind them and are in no danger of falling into a situation like there is in Pittsburgh, Ottawa and previously in Buffalo. Plans for a new arena are very much being discussed, while Wang also said that he received a letter of apology from Montreal after the National Anthem was booed there last week.
