If Devon Toews was on the 2021 playoff roster, I think they have a higher chance of beating Tampa, and Montreal.

People also forget Anders Lee was injured the whole playoffs he could’ve also helped them to beat Tampa.

It’s interesting to look back on that Toews trade. It was awful on day 1 and only looks worse in hindsight.

Toews immediately signs a 4x$4.1M, which instantly becomes one of the best value contracts in the league as he plays top pairing minutes and gets some Norris votes.

The Isles get 2 second round picks. They trade the 2021 pick in the Andrew Ladd cap dump. That pick became JJ Moser who is pretty good.

The 2022 pick became Calle Odelius. Not sure where he projects at this point.

Then you look and see what Pulock and Pelech have turned into...........I don't blame NY for choosing to move on from Toews over those guys, but boy it did not age well.

it blows my mind Luo is still the gm of this team, or even in the nhl at this point. The guys 80 years old hang them up already. At this rate he's going to die of old age before he loses his job.

You get a ton of leash when you have multiple Cups on your resume

It’s exactly why I shoot down every trade on here for a bottom 6 player with term.

It shouldn’t be a decision between Pelech, Pulock, and Toews. The Islanders made mistakes by giving big contracts to bottom of the lineup guys. Each of these guys was under contract with the Isles when Toews was an RFA and traded for scraps.

- 4x$3M to Komarov
- 5x$3.5M to Clutterbuck
- 5x$3.35M to Cizikas

You can make other arguments about bad contracts (Pageau, Bailey, etc) but at least those guys were playing in scoring roles in the lineup. If you just replace one of those forward slots with an ELC or a someone making ~$1M, you probably can afford to keep Devon Toews.

Ultimately I agree. I think the biggest bad decisions made were centered around Toews, the AAV on Lee, and the decision to expose Eberle.

If those decisions were different, you'd have one of the better (or at least one of the most well-rounded) defense cores in the league in Toews/Pelech/Pulock/Dobson. You'd also have a player in Eberle with a skillset that worked well with Barzal. And with a lower AAV on Lee, you'd have more money to round out the roster (i.e. not have Holmstrom on line 2 in my lines listed above).