I find this truly, truly shocking.
The Islanders are lowballing goalie Rick DiPietro.
When the Isles picked DiPietro as their number one draft pick, they traded away young up-and-coming goalie Roberto Luongo. Luongo is now kicking ass in Florida, the only bright spot on a previously lifeless team.
But the Islanders, and GM Mike Milbury, the architect of the moves, were betting the franchise on DiPietro.
The Isles haven't done much with him, though. They kept him in the AHL for two seasons, which might have been a little bit too long.
In February, 2004, Milbury voted to create rules to prevent goalies from handling the puck in the style of Martin Brodeur.
DiPietro is a prodigious puckhandler, agile, fast, and aggressive.
So basically, DiPietro's time with the Islanders has featured him not getting ice time and his GM voting to restrict how he plays hockey. Now he's not getting paid, while the Isles are cutting checks to just about everyone else on skates.
It's a really strange thing. If there's one pure rule to thriving in the NHL, it's to build up from solid goaltending.
I thought everyone knew that. Maybe I need to take a ride out to Uniondale to hook Milbury up with this tasty little hockey nugget.

Wow. As we march toward the start of the season, the moves get more and more interesting.
Phoenix picked up Curtis Joseph, creating a shockingly strong tandem of Cujo and Brian Boucher.
Just about every season I think the Coyotes have a real shot at being a sleeper team and just about every season I'm proven horribly wrong. But if you look at the mix of grit, offense, and experience the Coyotes have upfront (Mike Comrie, Brett Hull, Petr Nedved, Mike Ricci, Shane Doan, and Boyd Devereaux), they really do look as good as most average NHL teams. If they can get another scoring option or two (for depth) and one or two puck-moving defensemen, they're going to be a positively above-average team.
Oh. And the Devils finally got that sniper they've been looking for since Alexander Mogilny left in 2001. The new sniper? Alexander Mogilny.
How crazy is it that the fiscally conservative Devils are way over the cap already? What does that say about the new NHL system? This isn't the Rangers or the Red Wings going over. This is the freaking Devils. A team that waited four years to replace a player because they didn't want to spend the money (and because Teemu Selanne wouldn't come over).
Finally, Al Strachan has a really interesting interview with Leafs coach Pat Quinn about how NHL coaches will use the new rule changes to keep the game dull. Like take the whole no red center line thing. Quinn says coaches will just have their players chip the puck out of their own zone up the boards and to someone waiting at the blue line, creating the illusion of a penalty kill.
So don't go inviting friends over to see the new, exciting NHL until you've had a chance to check things out for yourself.

Here is a list of things I never thought I'd see:

• Peter Forsberg in a Flyers sweater. I guess you can go home again.
• A team made up entirely of centers, aka the Toronto Maple Leafs.
• An awful team actively trying to drive their top-notch goalie out of town (I'm talking about the Panthers and Roberto Luongo).

I'm not sure if Brendan Shanahan has political aspirations, but if he doesn't, he might want to consider it as a second career.
The guy is pretty smart.
He's in yesterday's Times, talking about what a good deal the new CBA is for players. Is he serious or just trying to make everyone feel better? I'm not sure. The thing is, though, that for all the player complaints about their new deal, everyone seems to be doing really well under the new deal.
Over in Philadelphia, GM Bobby Clarke had to give goaltender Robert Esche a two-year deal at an average of $1 million per year (login info.). Esche was actually due less money, but Clarke told the Philadelphia Inquirer he felt guilty about it. Hmmm. Possible. Or maybe Clarke realized if he underpaid Esche this season, he'd have no goalie next season. And because while the players were locked out, the owners didn't take the time to workout any honor code, Clarke knew there would be no shortage of teams lining up to pay Esche a fortune next season. So he had to give him a raise this season.
Newsday's Alan Hahn quotes some GMs as even thinking about signing the restricted free agents of teams close to the cap to high contracts. Under that scenario, if a team is too close to the cap, they can't re-sign their player. Since one would imagine a team wouldn't horribly low-ball a restricted agent, this would drive up the market value of players even more. And since arbitration is usually tied to recent contracts, salaries would edge up even more.
Steve Simmons sums up a closely related issue in less than 50 words: "If the Edmonton Oilers couldn't make money pre-lockout spending less than $31 million on salaries, how exactly are they going to make money spending basically the same amount in an NHL that will bring in less revenue than before?"
You've got to love those long-term thinking GMs.

Speaking of Alan Hahn, he has some great information on the Isles and their recent moves.
Like some of their trades and signings might have been designed to keep the Yashin-haters out of the locker room. Hahn leaves it to us to guess who the Alexei Yashin Hate Club members were. Hahn also notes the Islanders can buyout Yashin next season at terms that aren't horrible: $20 million over 10 years, which would count as just $2 million per season against the cap.
Yashin better have that breakout season the Islanders have been expecting for the past few seasons.

I missed this last week, but Mike Penner of the LA Times had a column suggesting it's best for the NHL and for ESPN if the two continue to work together (login info.).
I think the NHL needs ESPN a lot more than ESPN needs the NHL, though. ESPN has Bobby Knight. That's enough programming for the next 20 years.
I do hope that whoever ends up with the rights to the NHL decides to broadcast games based on merit. I don't think ESPN or ESPN2 broadcast any Calgary games until the last rounds of the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs. So very few average, non-hockey crazed sports fans even knew who Jarome Iginla was, despite his being one of the league's best and most exciting players. If ESPN had sold the game a little better during the season, more people might have actually been interested in a Tampa/Calgary finals.