E.L. wrote:
There was a weird method to Snow's madness. He took chances on fallers with bad reps, but one of them was Barzal so it all worked out in the end.
Snow also drafted a dropping Bailey, who isn't a superstar by any means (just ask Isles fans
) but will hit his 1000th game as an Islander later this week. I still can't believe Barzal dropped that far in the draft. But the misses- Ho-Sang, Dal Colle, and a few others set the org back.
Bellows- he's been more willing to give/take hits than he gets credit for, but that's why I question if there's something else we don't see in public. He always seems humble, so I don't think he's a dick. His father was an NHL player, so I assume he was taught the right way to behave. Maybe that made him feel entitled? Doesn't seem it. But waiving him while keeping Johnston and Soshnikov makes you wonder about Bellows. I have a feeling this is to make room to bring Salo back up, but still, Bellows was waived over Johnston and Soshnikov, neither of whom have looked that good in regular season games this year. Bellows looked decent in the first game, but was benched for almost the entire 3rd period. Lambert said it was because there was a lot of penalties both ways and he's not on special teams. If you play 16 seconds in a period, you've done something wrong, no matter how many penalties there are. The coach just isn't throwing you under the bus publicly.
We'll see in a few hours if he passes. He's making $1.2M on a single year contract. I'm sure another team has cap space for that. Isles may be happy to get rid of cap space though. Maybe Lou has a multi-step plan? You'd think if he's got a trade in the works that the other team would take Bellows as a throw-in, unless they're looking to shed cap space. But then take and waive him, gain an asset. Even if another team has 50 contracts he's got to be better than someone in their system, right? It all seems very strange.