New York Islanders

To say John Tavares is special is to repeat what has been said about him, in increasingly broader circles, for the last 15 years. He was the first to be granted exceptional status by the OHL. There was the attempt to let him into the NHL draft early since his birthday was so close to the cutoff. There were the stories from both hockey and lacrosse. As his mother told the New York Times in 2007, two years before he became essential to the Islanders' future: "It was one of the reasons why I moved him up an age. I had to. He played so aggressively and he was so strong." Barbara described lacrosse games and soccer games where John would play so hard, he would be thrown out of games for simply running over other players. He was 5. But as that article and so many others pointed out then, there have been plenty of special players at young ages. Each new level up the ladder weeds another crop out. Although Tavares broke records and generated a hype machine coming out of the OHL, he wasn't even the consensus top pick at the time of the draft in 2009. (Majority? Yes. Consensus? No. Victor Hedman and Matt Duchene drew some votes. Thankfully the Isles went with the majority.) There was reason to believe he would be a very good player, but perhaps not a franchise star. There's no reason to think that anymore. In his rookie year Tavares exhibited the body weakness typical of a 19-year-old and the skating weakness projected by his draft year critics. Some wondered if his future would be at wing, not center. They don't wonder that anymore. Though Tavares was a great power play poacher in his rookie year, the power play did not run through him. It does now. Though Tavares was a dangerous scorer in his rookie year, his weaknesses mad him a ripe for targeting by opponents' best lines. He's not a target now. He used to feed Matt Moulson for the majority of that dynamic duo's goals, but in 2013 Moulson flashed his dishing side while Tavares scored at a rate that dwarfed his previous years. Tavares scored 28 goals in 48 games, three short of what he scored in 82 games in 2011-12 and four more than what he scored in 82 games of his rookie year. I know when I watched Tavares during his rookie year, I saw a player who I thought would be a really good scorer but not a franchise cornerstone. Not someone to be mentioned in those generational superstar discussions. But he's improved dramatically each season to the point that you can even wonder if he's following in Sidney Crosby's wake. He's starting to get that attention, too. He is a Hart Trophy finalist in 2013. Media are routinely raving about him, with The Hockey News putting him just behind Crosby for its own MVP award. You see him high up on lists (the contract helps) more often than not now. I don't expect him to be a Crosby (in the area of incessant whining about officiating, I expect him to be better), but an oft-cited trait about him, most recently in The Hockey News, is reminiscent of Crosby and makes you wonder how high he can go: "All of us in the room see how hard he works every day," Matt Moulson said. "He just keeps getting better and better and that desire to not be satisfied with where he's at is one of the things that makes him so special." He's just 22 years old and already drives his team. How much better can he get?

To say John Tavares is special is to repeat what has been said about him, in increasingly broader circles, for the last 15 years. He was the first to be granted exceptional status by the OHL. There was the attempt to let him into the NHL draft early since his birthday was so close to the cutoff. There were the stories from both hockey and lacrosse. As his mother told the New York Times in 2007, two years before he became essential to the Islanders' future: "It was one of the reasons why I moved him up an age. I had to. He played so aggressively and he was so strong." read more

Can't sleep? Too much coffee? Just got in from your Friday night and need some time to wind down? Here are some reading suggestions since personally -- I got nothing. Shall we go from the rediculous to the sublime? Yes. Here is an example of the rediculous: Eyes on Isles by Michael Willhoft and his idea of what John Tavares' personal journal would look like. Um. No. But it's a distraction. Here is Tony Stabile's End of Season review for Hockey This Week and the respect the team walked away with -- for a change. And here's the reason for that respect, all the work that Jack Capuano did these past few seasons. This is a great article by Travis Betts on Jack and developing a belief in his system. read more

Can't sleep? Too much coffee? Just got in from your Friday night and need some time to wind down? Here are some reading suggestions since personally -- I got nothing. Shall we go from the rediculous to the sublime? Yes. Here is an example of the rediculous: Eyes on Isles by Michael Willhoft and his idea of what John Tavares' personal journal would look like. Um. No. But it's a distraction. Here is Tony Stabile's End of Season review for Hockey This Week and the respect the team walked away with -- for a change. And here's the reason for that respect, all the work that Jack Capuano did these past few seasons. This is a great article by Travis Betts on Jack and developing a belief in his system. Then if you want to spend money, there is the Islanders jersey auction. Got $6,000 for a John Tavares jersey? I was out of it as soon as I noticed I couldn't find a Matt Martin jersey. What's that all about??

Canada, you may want to sit down. The Pittsburgh Penguins advanced to the Eastern Conference finals Friday, eliminating the Ottawa Senators -- the last remaining Canadian team -- with a decisive 6-2 victory in Game 5. With that, an American club will win the Stanley Cup for the 19th straight season. Now comes the annual Canadian tradition where the country shifts from counting Canadian teams in contention to Canadian players on American teams. The Senators made a slight improvement in Game 5, holding the Penguins to fewer goals than in their previous game. Unfortunately, it was just one fewer, and that's not nearly enough when they allowed 7 the last time around. This game was a lot like Game 4, come to think of it: All Pittsburgh, and not all that close.

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Phoenix Coyotes general manager Don Maloney signed a long-term contract extension Friday with the NHL-owned team. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

As the New York Islanders assembled some success, or at least progress, in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, you'd hear more and more other teams and hockey media note their team speed. The Penguins noted it as the Islanders had them on their heels -- and outshot them -- in four of six playoff games. But what is it, really? "Team speed" is one of hockey's many amorphous measures that has no trusty, well, measure. You think you know it when you see it, but you can't exactly pinpoint it nor average out everyone's 40-yard dash to get a rating. Tallying up individuals you think could win a lap around the ice doesn't quite tell you what you want. Counting breakaways doesn't tell you much. (Yes, the Islanders have breakaway machine Michael Grabner. What about the other 17 skaters?) Even observing how fast a team gets in on the forecheck is more of a stylistic thing -- are they aggressive or passive? -- than a measure of speed. But that last point might be closest to the mark. One age-old principal in coaching is that the puck moves faster than any individual player can skate. From that premise comes the idea that if you maintain puck possession -- and do it securely and quickly -- then you are creating discomfort for the opponent, who is now scrambling to keep up. There is plenty of talk about the league being a fast, young man's game now. Part of that is probably an echo chamber, but part of that is real: Transitions, keeping the puck, getting other teams' off their game, it's always important but it is more so when younger (and faster) talent is taking over and obstruction is the exception rather than the rule. In an official team site article about Jack Capuano that talked a lot about all kinds of the usual indefinable hockey concepts of "grit" and "determination" and "accountability," there was also a little of this: "You can look at our team individually, man-for-man against other teams that we play," Capuano said. "Maybe we’re not as fast individually, but there’s a certain style. We have to play fast and we have to play on our toes, and I thought we did a good job of that this year." and this: "Every single day, we had the focus and the work ethic, and the right details in practice," forward John Tavares said. "Guys bought in and were doing the right things. I think early on, we didn’t have the success. There were a lot of ups and downs. But we developed a lot of good habits early in the season during practice as far as how we needed to play, and that kept us going, kept us in the mix, even when things weren’t going well." For me those descriptions bear out: As the season went on, the Islanders had "good habits" and "details" in place that aided whether their team speed mattered. I look at their breakouts, and how consistently wingers were able to receive and move passes from the half walls, how consistently a center or second winger was able to receive the relay breaking out of the zone, and how consistently the third forward was joining that rush and able to convert a breakout into a transition to the opposition's zone. None of this is new or groundbreaking stuff. A hockey breakout is quite simple, really. But to have consistent success, "speed" sure helps. And even if the opponent knows what you're going to do, if you can speed it up ... catch me if you can. But that doesn't just mean the foot speed to get there before the opponent. It means the speed to handle the puck quickly and accurately, making a quick decision to move it onward. (The second line of Frans Nielsen, Kyle Okposo and Josh Bailey became machine-like in this area on transition plays down the stretch. Consistent breakouts and audibles that got the puck out with possession, limiting time in their zone.) It also requires the work ethic to make sure you keep going at that speed, breakout after breakout, even when things aren't working out. Skating and moving at high capacity is hard; quick decis

As the New York Islanders assembled some success, or at least progress, in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, you'd hear more and more other teams and hockey media note their team speed. The Penguins noted it as the Islanders had them on their heels -- and outshot them -- in four of six playoff games. But what is it, really? "Team speed" is one of hockey's many amorphous measures that has no trusty, well, measure. You think you know it when you see it, but you can't exactly pinpoint it nor average out everyone's 40-yard dash to get a rating. read more

The NHL announced today that the winners for five major awards will be announced prior to Game Two of the Stanley Cup Final in a television special. The special will air at 7pm, although the date of Game Two is not yet known. The Hart, Calder, Norris and Vezina trophies, as well as the Ted Lindsay Award will be announced during the special. The Islanders’ John Tavares is a finalist for the Hart Trophy, given to the player judged to be the most valuable to his team. The other finalists are Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. Tavares’ teammate Matt Moulson is a finalist for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for sportsmanship, along with Patrick Kane and Martin St. Louis. That award will be announced on the NHL Network at 5pm, the day prior to Game Two of the Finals.

Kevin Schultz, Islanders Point Blank:One of the neat things that NHL.com has been doing lately is editing actual NHL highlights to mimic NHL 94, the classic video game. First they did Pavel Datsyuk and Patick Kane, now John Tavares has gotten the special treatment. If you’re not familiar, NHL 94 is the classic NHL game released just about twenty years ago now. It’s famous in pop culture for that scene in Swingers with Vince Vaughn and for being the first hockey video game that everyone really took to. It had a couple predecessors, but they were very similar versions. For me personally, this was the hockey game that my generation grew up on. Kids who were hockey fans and those who weren’t both loved it, and it was released on both NES and Sega Genesis, which were HUGE systems at the time. I can honestly say I spent a good four years after the game was released playing the PC version on our circa 1990 IBM computer. That version of the game came on — get this — two floppy disks, which is just crazy when you consider some games today require 8GB on your XBOX (looking at you, Halo 4). That’s like a kajillion floppy disks, give or take. I’ll have to take a look and see if I can dig up the disks, they’re probably still sitting in the basement somewhere.