We aren’t even a quarter of the way into this intensely busy and condensed part of the NHL’s offseason schedule, but already the Islanders have made two of the biggest headlines. More importantly, Lou Lamoriello’s moves over the past two days positions them to make more headlines, if they want to.
With the Isles now carving out about $12 million (plus Johnny Boychuk’s LTIR) in cap space, they finally have room to re-sign key RFAs, possibly UFAs (Casey Cizikas), and dabble in other bigger things. Everyone’s talking or dreaming of things like Gabriel Landeskog (UFA), Ryan Suter (UFA), Zach Parise (likely cheap and storybook UFA) or Vladimir Tarasenko (highly paid and recently very injured trade bait, more on that below), but with Lamoriello there could always be things coming from left field.