— John Tavares (@91Tavares) July 1, 2018 — John Tavares (@91Tavares) July 1, 2018
While I sat pondering how even the most emotionally vulnerable of fan could look at the last nine seasons of John Tavares and the New York Islanders and come away with even the slightest inclination that the former should feel guilty for wasting the latter's time, I was reminded of something. That something was the feeling of resentment I felt for both Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk whenever Michael Ryder "skated" around the ice as the bargain basement replacement for their offense. You can treat this as a disclaimer, I suppose, as the following stands to be pretty harsh, but I do get why some of the Long Island faithful have taken aim at their long time captain for making the easy choice of exploring far greener pastures seem extremely difficult. For the same reason that most husbands eventually accept what they've married into and stop putting up a fight when the opposite side of an argument is just begging to be taken, it's always easier to blame the former player when the organization is who you have pledged your undying allegiance to. That said, anyone that has taken any umbrage whatsoever with John Tavares is quite clearly lashing out, and while I understand their inclination to do so, I would be remiss not to remind them how ridiculous that is. I'd encourage all Islanders' fans to pop a percocet real quick because this is going to get painful, but let's talk facts for a second. A franchise who woefully missed the playoffs, due to a damning lack of defense and goaltending, by a considerable margin let their ownership of one of the most enticing assets in league history expire. It may be true that said asset expressed his desire to be retained, but to hold John Tavares responsible for maximizing the value of John Tavares tells you all that you need to know about the faith in the management at the time of the trade deadline. Consider this, the Islanders gave Garth Snow, of all people, the ability to trust in his own ability to sell a franchise that was the NHL equivalent of homeless to a guy that was set to be offered a world of possibilities by the prestigious team in his hometown. I don't even care if John Tavares was getting the infamous fisherman logo tattooed on his asscheek during the afternoon of February 26th, because the only ink that would have guaranteed his future in the "greater" New York area would have had to dry on a dotted line. Maybe I'm naive in believing that it truly was more gut wrenching than it should have been for the one of the best players in the NHL to opt out of gambling the rest of his career on an organization in flux, but not as naive as one would have to be to believe that their wasn't one single suitor capable of making the Islanders look like a second rate operation as soon as he hit the open market. Of course, what followed a season that did a shameful job of instilling confidence in John Tavares, could only be described as the work of the hockey gods. The goddamn Godfather of General Managers found himself available to the organization that already employed his son. A coach that still had the beer he drank out of the Stanley Cup on his breath stumbled into an unemployment pool that was currently home to one single raft. The Islanders seemingly breathed some life into their chances of keeping the league's most sought after of talent, but the truth is that they basically tripped ass backwards onto the horseshoe that somehow got stuck up their ass. The tandem of Lou Lamoriello and Barry Trotz is a formidable one, but it all-but-fell into the lap of a desperate franchise at the most opportune of time. In theory, bold moves were made to keep John Tavares. In execution, blatantly obvious moves were made to keep John Tavares. Now, I totally get why too much was read into them too soon when in reality it ended up being too little, too late. Still, you'd think that fans whose hearts were on the line would have checked the reviews of the basket before they put all their eggs in it. I'll appreciate Lou Lamoriello to my dying day. I think the personification of professionalism was an unbelievably easy choice for an Islanders' organization that needed their culture shocked. That said, the one thing he has not proven adept at throughout his illustrious career is putting personal pride aside and doing whatever is necessary to swoon superstars into staying. Scott Niedermayer, on the heels of having added to his three championships with a Norris Trophy during his first season taking over for Scott Stevens as the Devils' captain, decided to join his brother in Anaheim. Zach Parise, having captained his team within two wins of owning real estate in title town, decided home is where his heart was in heading to Minnesota. John Tavares could have been gifted the entirety of the Hamptons for his own personal use and he still wouldn't have had as many reasons to remain in Long Island as those two players had to remain in New Jersey. Lou Lamoriello is a lot of things. Excluding the outlier of the ownership-influenced Kovalchuk fiasco, a shameless seller of his stubborn soul for transcendent skill is not one of them. The fact that he's fallen a bit out out-of-touch as an executive doesn't make him anywhere near a bad one, but if his presence is your biggest bargaining chip then you're probably scrapping the bottom of the bag. If Islanders' fans want to be upset with John Tavares for ghosting them as their optimism lost its slipper and went full-Cinderella while Saturday ticked into Sunday then I can understand the frustration. If the image of Little Johnny boy wrapped cozily in his Maple Weafs' bwankey and the likely unintended implication that his tenure in Toronto was a foregone conclusion makes them want to scream then I can sympathize. What I can't do is blame John Tavares for exercising his right to make the most out of the rest of his career when the first half of it was held back by an organization that put an exclamation point on its ineptitude by wildly mismanaging the odds of his departure. If the painstaking waiting period was any indication, John Tavares actually did give the idea of retiring an Islander way more thought than anyone else would have. It's not his fault it took him meeting with other teams for hours on end to realize that he couldn't justify devoting his future to a franchise that waited until the last possible second to even slightly advocate for its own.
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