Upside Plays

Team: 2024-25 New York Islanders

Initial Creation Date: Apr. 15, 2024

Published: Apr. 15, 2024

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

You're the Islanders. You have minimal cap space this summer. The past 4 years have been a ton of giving up futures to make the team better now, and for the most part that's worked. But you've already given up 4 picks (including one that has already turned out JJ Moser, a dependable top-4 LHD) to move bad money off the books in the past couple of years.

It should be a goal this summer to *not* move anything major and start restocking the farm. Patrick Roy has come in and turned this team into a playoff contender, and you're not losing anything major this summer, so instead of gutting the farm to move guys like Anders Lee & JG Pageau, you can try and ride it out for one more year and then deal with those contracts when they've both got only one year left.

RESERVE LIST
-Both Alexes need to be signed this summer to keep their rights. I think Ljungkrantz is worth it just because he was a decently high pick, and I think Jefferies was a consistent scorer in college who would be a good depth pickup.
TRADES
-Wahlstrom for Kaliyev: both guys need a change of scenery, both guys have been similarly productive (Kaliyev is 35-36-71 in 188 career GP; Wahlstrom is 34-33-67 in 192 GP), LA gets a little more in the deal to account for the fact that they're giving up the younger player.

RE-SIGNS
-Mike Reilly can maybe do better in free agency, but my hope is he likes Long Island enough to stay around and continue being a solid third pair LHD.

-Cal Clutterbuck takes the Zach Parise Memorial "One More Year" Contract - he's played well this year and somehow is in line to play all 82. He's the type of guy who I'd keep bringing back as long as he wants to keep playing.

-Simon Holmstrom & Kyle MacLean have been solid bottom-6 guys going into their first RFA year; Lou has a history of keeping those guys around on sub-$1M contracts for a couple years. Same goes for the guys here who are call-up candidates/AHL depth.

UFA SIGNINGS
-Jakub Vrana is the big swing here. He should be available for a cheap deal considering he's spent most of this year in the AHL, but he's still only 28 and there's enough goal-scoring pedigree there to hope for a bounce-back in a new environment. Lamoriello's Islanders are a veteran team with a good leadership group, so the hope would be that Vrana stays on the straight & narrow and recaptures the 20-goal talent he had in the past. If he flames out, he's 100% buried in the AHL, so it's a low-risk/high-reward option here.

-Travis Boyd will be 31 on Opening Night and is coming off a major injury, so he's another guy you're hoping returns to form and should be affordable based on that. He was a solid 35-40 point middle-6er over the past few years, and I'd envision him more as a Swiss army knife-type here - the bottom 6 has a lot of guys with a lot of miles on the tread, and Boyd can slide in to a lot of different spots to give a guy a breather and keep everyone fresh for April.