Top Five Questions on the Board--Here are one guy's answers.

The Islanders head into the off-season with the potential to be sporting a much different lineup when the team reconvenes for training camp in September. While the season very much showed promise and a change in the culture surrounding the Islanders, the summer is going to be the time where we as fans find out whether this is a team ready to make the next step or whether the team will backslide like it did in 2002.

With that in mind, there are five key questions the team needs to answer as we head into the summer. I'll take a look at the questions over the next week or so with different posts each time.

Question #5: What to do about the suspended Islanders.

This is a very interesting question. Both Chris Simon and Sean Hill were important role players who added to the leadership core. Simon was a guy who made the opponents accountable when they took liberties with his teammates. Hill was, quite simply, a rock on the backline. Both men signed bargain contracts just before training camp last fall; which made their contributions to the Islanders so very cost effective.

I am thinking that Chris Simon will be back. Regarding The Incident of Which We Will Not Speak, it was unfortunate as hell and probably can be labeled as the tipping point where the promising season began taking on such a strange tone. He will only have to serve a handful of games of the suspension in the next season and his prior relationship being mentored by Ted Nolan leads me to speculate about his return. Plus, while it can be argued that Simon's reaction on the ice was selfish, he has always been known as a great teammate who sticks up for the guys in the room.

With Sean Hill, the situation is problematic. He has to serve a full twenty game-suspension before he can play next season. A bargain at 600K, my guess is that he will have suitors next season who are willing to pay him a pro-rated salary of the same rate.

The real question is what kind of advantage did this banned substance give Sean Hill? He sure played a lot of minutes down the stretch, so was it something that boosted his endurance? Was it something that helped with those nagging injuries? I mean, the guy is 37 years old and was super-resilient over the past few weeks of the season. Something like human growth hormone would help cure those aches and pains a lot faster than even sitting out would have.

This one is a tough call. I bet if you polled the players themselves that they'd want to have Sean Hill back on the team next season. All of the quotes about Sean Hill lead you to think that the boys all like and admire him a whole heck of a lot. I think that the fans admire(d) Hill this season, too. I know that I did. What the whole situation is going to boil down to is whether or not Hill is going to be accused of "cheating" and whether or not the Islanders Braintrust has any reason to believe in his guilt or innocence.

We'll be back with a look at Question #4 later this week.