Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – All Eyes are Sweden episode on the New York Islanders monitoring what’s out there.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “but at the end of it like all eyes run this game and so now we’re looking at the Vancouver Canucks and we’re looking at the New York Islanders and we’re seeing the tale of two distinct teams like for Vancouver everything is going gangbusters but let’s drill down on the, on the islanders here for a couple of seconds.”
Friedman: “Jeff, unfortunately for them, it didn’t get any better on Thursday night. They went into Seattle, a team that was also struggling and they they couldn’t get the win there. So, every day the tension just piles up on Long Island.
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First of all, I don’t think Lou Lamoriello is sitting on his hands. He didn’t go on the road trip. He was in Toronto at the GM meetings. And you know, one of the things about him is, people don’t like to say a lot about what he’s up to, partially out of respect and partially because he still gives the fear of God into people. And you know, if you want to make a deal with Lamoriello and if it gets out, I think it’s harder now to say if it gets out, it’s not going to happen. I don’t think that happens as much.
Like you’ll remember last year when he traded for Horvat, we said on the pod on the Monday morning, look out for the Islanders. And I think it got done that day. And someone said to me later that there were people who were nervous in Vancouver when they heard about that because they’re like, ‘Uh-oh, are we going to lose the deal?’ And you know, someone just joked with me later, it’s too hard to do that now. There’s too much that gets out.
But I do think that he’s up to some stuff. I think he was talking to a lot of GMs at this meeting, or the word was getting around that he was asking what’s out there. I really, I think they’re looking for a scorer. They’ve been looking for a scorer for a while. I definitely think they’re still looking for another one.
And I also think they’re in on some of these defensemen maybe from Calgary. I think he is looking at some ideas out there about how it can work and what he can get. Somebody hinted to me without confirming it, that who was at the meeting, they said they thought that Calgary was one of the teams on the Islanders radar about something they could do. And so I think he’s definitely looking out there.
You know, one of the guys I wonder about for the Flames if you look at the Flames they traded for (Yegor) Sharangovich. They, they’re young guys like (Connor) Zary looks like a player. (Martin) Pospisil been pretty close, pretty good. Like, they look like they have some, some young players here.
One of the guys I wonder about if they’re going to be a factor in all this is going to be (Oliver) Wahlstrom. And simply because I can see the player saying, you know, I need, if I’m not going to get the opportunity here, I have to get it somewhere else. And I can see players, like a team like Calgary that picked up a player like Sharangovich, possibly being interested in someone like that. I’m not saying it’s going to be him but that’s the kind of player I could look at Calgary having interest in.
If they’re the fit with and I could see a player like Wahlstrom simply saying look, if I need to get my career going, if it’s not going to be here, you know, it’s, can be somewhere else. That’s kind of the guy some people have suggested to me it’s going to be interesting to watch and all this.
You know, we should also talk about Lane Lambert. You know, there were a lot of rumors flying around on Lambert on Wednesday. Obviously, nothing happened. I really love Layne Lambert, the person. Look one coach has been changed. You always wonder is it going to be more? I don’t have any information at this point in time that they’re doing it and it’s tough to get anything out of New York.
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It’s just that I think everybody’s sensitivities are heightened to it just because there was a coaching change this week. To me it comes down to what does Lamoriello think makes more sense, making a move that helps them or changing a coach to help them?”
Marek: “Bad penalties giving up leads, special teams issues. There’s a lot of problems there.”
