Offseason Question #4: Which of the unrestricted goalies--Mike Dunham and Wade Dubielewicz--will return?

With Rick DiPietro locked up as an Islander for the next few (how many is it?) years, the Islanders have to address the backup goalie situation. Ideally, he will be a guy who can be counted on to always be prepared should he have to be thrown into the lineup.

Mike Dunham, it has to be said, really helped the Islanders on the opening west coast road trip when the team looked out of control and unorganized. With that many new faces in the lineup, in retrospect, we shouldn't have been surprised that the team got off on the wrong foot out west. On October 11, Dunham backstopped the Islanders to a much-needed victory in Anaheim that stopped the bleeding. It allowed everyone to breath again--things were never as bad as they looked in LA or San Jose a few nights earlier--and feel good as the boys came home for the home opener against the Bruins on the 14th.

By the same token, when DiPietro got hurt and Dunham has to ride into save the day, he failed miserably. Anyone who watched those games with Dunham in net remembers the flopping, the slow reaction time, and the times he had his back to the play while allegedly trying to stop shots. Sure, DiPietro makes a decent defensive corps look a lot better than it actually might be, but Dunham just looked totally unprepared when he had to play. And let's face it: the guy played bad enough that Ted Nolan had to go to the bullpen for Wade Dubielewicz. That's right: the Soundtigers goalie from the AHL when the team was fighting for it's playoff life.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that Dunham and DiPietro were competing for playing time on the US Olympic team, isn't it? I'm thinking that Mike Dunham has played his last game for the Islanders and the fact that he and GM Garth Snow are such good buddies can not and will not rescue him. This is not a hostage situation. Is he done in the NHL? Perhaps. Mike Dunham is reportedly one of the good guys in the league. He might get a chance on that fact alone. Let's wish him the best and move on.

Dubielewicz may be more problematic. He's proved to be a bit of a cult hero over the last few weeks of the season. Also, he didn't fare too badly in game one against the Sabres. The real question becomes whether or not another team in the league can give him a better opportunity than the Islanders can for next season. At 27, Dubielewicz is just getting into that age range where goalies tend to blossom as players. Does he think that someone else can give him a real starting shot? Or has the good will in the Islanders organization made him realize that there are certainly worse deals in the NHL than being Rick DiPietro's backup?

Look around the league and there aren't a lot of wide-open goaltending jobs out there. If you start at the bottom of the table, you see that the Flyers just signed Marty Biron to a new contract. Washington has local legend Olaf Kolzig. Los Angeles has bigger guys like Dan Cloutier and Mathieu Garon. The Coyotes are in the middle of a huge player- and front office-purge. There may be an opportunity there. Chicago just resigned Patrick Lalime and they have the immovable Khabibulin contract.

Best-case scenario is that the Islanders offer Dubie a one-way contract to stay. This would keep him from going back to Bridgeport (he has nothing to prove in the American League) and he would become the Islanders' backup goalie. And I think we all would be fine with that.