Why New York Islanders fans need to ease up on Rick Dipietro

ex-coach Ted Nolan, owner Charles Wang, Rick DiPietro and GM Garth Snow.

      Recently Islanders goal-tender Rick Dipietro made some pretty startling comments about whats its been like for him over the past 6 years on Long Island. There is no doubt in my mind that a'lot of the hatred NY Islanders fans have spewed at the former all-star goaltender is warranted. Brought on by a controversial deal made by GM Garth Snow locking up Dipietro for over 15 years paying $67.5 million. A 15 year deal for a goal tender is preposterous to begin with, fans and analysts began to question the deal almost immediately. Fears were brought to life when Dipietro suffered a hip injury while mic'd up during the 2008 all star game at the skills competition. And a series of injuries and bad circumstance bring us to today, 4 years later with less than 50 games played.

      But I'm not here to jump on that bandwagon, in fact I think a'lot of what the fans blame Dipi for is really the fault of owner Charles Wang and GM Garth Snow, and the ability or lack there of to replace or maintain talent. The Islanders highest single season goal producer in the last 6 years is Jason Blake who had a 40 goal campaign in the 06-07 season at age 33. The Islanders failed to retain him the following season, at a reasonable asking price he went to the leafs and continued to prove he had 2 50-60 pt seasons left in him. Along with Blake Veteran's Ryan Smyth, Tom Poti and Viktor Kozlov all left the team, To replace them Snow brought in seasoned veteran Bill Guerin, Mike Comrie and Ruslan Fedotenko. In the 07-08 season no player would score over 50 pts and in 08-09 only newly acquired Mark Streit would record over 40 pts. They went from having 5 players with over 50 pts in 06-07, to 1 between 07-08, 08-09. It's taken 5+  years to develop home grown talent into those replacements via John Tavares, Matt Mouslon, Kyle Okposo and Michael Grabner. Goal-tending cant help you if your not putting the biscuits in the basket. Perhaps Islander fans have forgotten Dwayne Roloson made a stop here too, as well as Marty Biron and Joey Macdonald. Roloson left the Islanders at 6-10-1 only to go to the Lightning  and go 18-12-4 the same season, and win 10 games in the playoffs.

       Also all the blame for being a waste of cap space, this only matters when your team is spending to the cap limit. The Islanders are in constant battles to even hit the cap floor. Even going as far as to sign Tim Thomas who will never play a game for them just to avoid cap penalties. Islanders ownership is probably happy Dipietro's still a cap hit or they would be in real trouble. In fact signing Thomas is what enabled them to send Ricky down to the minors, ironic don't you think? The Islanders have over $16 million in cap space and Dipietro would be a $2.3 million dollar cap hit. So when your at your next Islanders or Sound Tiger games, perhaps you should think before spewing hate. Maybe think about the decisions that really got this team where it is and not make a scapegoat for who really dug this hole.