Failure™ Magazine

Mike Milbury’s New York Islanders

Seven years of futility on Long Island — and why the team is poised to win again.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Sports

“What bothers me about this whole situation is that people are real critical of the Islanders, Mike Milbury, and the way the team has played, without looking at the facts,” says assistant coach Greg Cronin. “You’ve got an organization that was literally stripped of its assets by very unstable ownership—a three or four year period where there was a real degree of destruction from a hidden agenda list.” In particular, Cronin refers to a one-year stretch where Milbury was ordered by ownership to dump payroll, regardless of consequences. “Every day was like a fire sale,” he says. “You talk about failure—you came into work every day and it was like getting punched in the stomach.”

The most prominent player Milbury has traded is Zigmund Palffy, currently one of the league’s leading goal scorers, and the Islanders’ second-round draft choice in 1991. “There’s no way Mike wanted to trade Ziggy,” says Jim Cerny, play-by-play announcer for the Islanders’ radio broadcasts, “but when your owner—your boss—tells you to do something, you have to follow through. He slashed the payroll and did the best that he could with it.”

Milbury also traded or waived many other former draft picks—most of them first-or second-rounders—including defensemen Rich Pilon, Scott Lachance, Darius Kasparaitis, Bryan McCabe, Wade Redden and Eric Brewer, plus forwards like Travis Green and Todd Bertuzzi. In return the Islanders mostly received high draft choices—which augurs well for the future but explains why the team has continued to struggle this season.

“Our core players—Brad Isbister, Tim Connolly, Taylor Pyatt, Dave Scatchard—they’re kids,” says Cronin. “There’s no other team in the league that’s got a core group that young. You come to me in five years and tell me they’re not going to be good—a real tough team to play against. San Jose and Ottawa both went through the same thing we’re going through, but they stayed with their picks. They rode those guys and they lost with them and now they’re winning with them,” he says.

Wins and losses aside, the team hit rock bottom last season when Milstein and Gluckstern paid out a league-low payroll and treated the players as second-class citizens. “There were moments last year when it was almost laughable,” says Cronin. “We were taking commercial airlines—Southwest Airlines—with guys waiting at the airport, and 6’4”, 6’5” guys wedged between people [on the plane].” At that point, winning was almost a secondary goal for the team. “The assistant coaches were charged with creating an environment that was enjoyable for the players,” says Cronin. “When you have that environment the expectation is not to win the Stanley Cup or make the playoffs, it’s to keep people happy.”

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