Thought exercise

Lmfao Kyle Connor is one of the leagues best goal scorers, signed on a good contract for awhile and just scored 47 goals last year. And you think you can get him for a defender who has 1 good year to his name?

Islanders need to stay the course, and here is why:

1. Sorokin IS the goalie and he is young enough to be just that for close to the next decade.

2. The blueine. The top 4 of Pelech, Pullock, Romanov and Dobson are fantastic, and all under 30. Fair to say that those 4 are the defensive core for the next 6 seasons.... which in the meantime, others are likely to comes along (Aho, Bolduc?)

The Islanders ate built from the net out. I agree, outside of Barzal, Wahlstrom and Beauvillier foward core is very long in the tooth, but I think they need to pick there spots here. The contracts ate not great, in fact difficult to move. So using draft capital to fill out the forward lines is perhaps the best direction.

All I can say is this team reminds me of the Devil prior to the cup runs. Goaltending set. Blueline set. Some smart drafting and the Holik and Arnott deals, and they took off.

Islanders shouldn’t be rushing to make any big changes like this. Jets decline the deal anyways, would take much more than what NYI would want to pay to get Connor.

They need to compete now before everyone gets too old. Outside of raty theres nobody in the system that projects as anything more than a 3rd liner. Waiting for draft picks to hit means even if we nail the 23 1st rounder youre still talking about 4 years minimum until they become a solid contributor. By that time the F core will be ancient, pulock and pelech will be hitting 30 and the roster will be in shambles.

Personally I wouldn’t trade Dobson. He’s too important to their blue line and it would be impossible to replace him. Like Connor would give Barzal an elite winger, but it doesn’t help that much if it comes at the expense of their best puck moving defenseman. It’s also worth mentioning Klingberg has entered a steep decline in play over the past few years.