GM Snow on 2006-07, UFA’s and Ryan Smyth
April 25th, 2007 by murph
NewYorkIslanders.com has a two part interview with GM Snow looking back at the 2006-07 season and the coming off-season plans. Here’s an excerpt from part one.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is what are your plans for the many potential unrestricted free agents you could have on July 1, but especially Ryan Smyth and Jason Blake?
Snow: We want to bring back as many as possible. I don’t look at this offseason any differently than I did the trade deadline. We only want to add to it while subtracting as little as possible.
I’m not going to go into our plans for each individual player, but I understand that Ryan and Jason are special cases not only for us but to our fans, too. Ryan Smyth turned out to be everything we knew we traded for. He was one of our best players on the ice for just about every game and he brought so much more to the Islanders than just his play. Our players learned a lot from being around him day after day. Of course, we’re going to do everything we can so Ryan stays an Islander for a long time.
What can you say about Jason? He’ll be 34 when training camp opens but he just keeps getting better. His work ethic is phenomenal. We will continue to talk to Jason about ways to keep him an Islander.
How do you look back on the Ryan Smyth trade? It was the talk of the league for a while and you certainly received plenty of praise for it. But when the Islanders looked like they may not make the playoffs late, then all of a sudden criticism came your way.
Snow: That’s a trade I would make every day of the week with no regrets. With the new CBA we’re more of a “now” league than ever. If you have a good team and can add a Ryan Smyth to your roster, you do it. Plus, we still have some strong prospects led by Kyle Okposo – who was not even a consideration for that trade — and plenty of young players like Gervais, Campoli and Bergeron already up with us, so the cupboard is far from bare.
