The recipe for success.as a fan is the following:

DEMAND QUALITY and if the quality is not there you STOP GOING TO GAMES.

The drafting of Bailey? Nice, if we had a deep farm, but we drafted Bailey in order to draft two more guys (Petrov was already ours as we got the Edmonton/Anaheim pick earlier) who look like role players, maybe better. We needed a “build around” guy to get this team somewhere, a “Potvin, Bossy or Trottier” like punch. We opted not to and have further stocked our farm with potential second liners (first liners on a bad team).

So we absolutely need a few star players in our system. THAT is why Washington is better now, not because they built with kids, but they built with THE RIGHT KIDS.

So many times we go after vanilla or way out there flavors (Oleg?) to build around and end up right back to square one. Snow decided to start fresh, with kids……like Oleg, the Redwood defense, Connolly, Yashin/Peca, Smyth, Grit, Run and Gun, Yashin captaincy, “Ted Nolan type players” and every other annual or semi-annual rebuild/retool plan.

Our plans are just not well thought out and the only time we were surefootedon a plan was under Milbury, but one time the owners gutted and another time we had to modify the game to match Toronto’s.

Perhaps someone told Milbury he wanted these changes? Just like a smart on paper team was disintigrated to please an ownership group?

And maybe the common thread throughout these myriad of bad retoolings is the ownership meddling?

Just a thought. And thus, the bad decisions are rewarded when people pay to watch the game.

One time, Wings fans stopped going. It was the mid to late eighties. Ownership got the message and scouting was improved, management was improved, coaching was improved and voila! The team improved. Ilitch was and is proud of his team (and during his building of a great team, he bettered the Joe Louis Arena, bought surrounding properties and made real estate moneys and for this strategy, became a fan hero who is to date ADORED!).

Mr. Botta, I would love to have seen you compare us to the lame duck Detroit Red Wings of the early Yzerman era and the fan support that was won back by a smart and CARING ownership.

Pizza Pizza.

Meyer did do a good job shadowing Ovechkin all night. But on that play, there was absolutely nothing he could do.

The Caps assembled that last group with Ovechkin as the cornerstone, but also drafted Alexander Semin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Mike Green (referred to as the “young guns” in these parts). Add to that a young goalie — Simeon Varlamov, who won his NHL debut in Montreal last weekend, but who probably isn’t going to be a regular for a couple of years yet — and that is the core that the Caps will move forward with. McPhee also sold off a lot of high-priced talent to get contributors — Green was a pick in a trade of Robert Lang, a trade that also netted prospect Tomas Fleischmann. Moving Sergei Gonchar returned Shaone Morrisonn and a pick that became jeff Schultz. Brooks Laich was a prospect that came in a trade of Peter Bondra. Varlamov was the pick that the Caps got for Brendan Witt when he was traded to Nashville.

The players who fill those roles with the Islanders are the ones you should be paying attention to, even as they have their rough spots this year or next.

he mustve got lessons from you as to how easy it is….

The Isles have actually picked BETTER in the lower rounds than in the first for about the last twenty years – Ziggy and Comeau were twos, Neilsen and Chara were threes; they got good service out of Tommy Salo (a five), Campoli (a seven), and Martinek (eight).

The point is, you have to know what to do with that pick when you’ve got it, and you can’t flub it (Alexander Daigle) or give up early (Roberto Luongo).

They could have held onto Luongo, drafted Heatley or Gaborik instead, kept them with Olli Jokinen… NO, I promised myself not to. #$%#$T%%^~!