69 points and 5 points out of the playoffs

Today, I am here to tell you something that we all need to wrap our heads around: the Islanders are not going to make the playoffs.

I am not a defeatist at all. Anyone who knows me for longer than three minutes fully understands that I will be rooting like hell for the Islanders to win every last game this season. In fact, with two games this week against the Rangers, I'll be rooting double-time; begging for our boys to win.

But the playoffs? It doesn't look likely.

The Isles dropped 4 points this weekend and while the effort was there, the results simply were not. The Islanders peppered Philadelphia and Florida and man, I still can't believe that the freaking Panther backup stopped 53 shots yesterday with all of the heroes in the house. I mean, the goalie was a dude I had never even heard of before, and I consider myself enough of a hockey nerd that I'll match my credentials with anyone not named Bob McKenzie.

The truth is that I like this team. They are, for the most part, a likeable group of scrappy underdog-types. They all come off as solid citizens, too. But that can only go so far--about 69 points in 67 games. The Isles are going to need to get some scoring on the team for next season. That is the bottom line. Also, the management corps are going to have to figure out whether or not they want to keep guys like The Tank and Satan who may be attractive to other teams.

The Satan issue is a tricky one. We all know that Miro can score. Flip over his hockey card and you can see that. This year--and for a good part of last season--the goals are just not there. Now we know he's been battling injury all season long so right there, the guy has an excuse if he needs one. Anybody could see that he is not right by the way he set up for the one-timer in the first period f the game on Saturday. His knee is clearly giving him trouble. The difficult thing here is to identify the trend. Is Miro's production down because he is injured or is he beginning to decline?

The Tank is who he is. He got a chance to play with the Islanders' two most creative offensive players and while it proved to be magic at first, the thrill was gone shortly thereafter. He's proven not to be a guy who is going to pot 30 goals. He works hard and plays hard and is probably a great teammate, but for the rate he's been paid, there has not been what can be considered a far return on investment.

So, right there you have a couple of guys who the Isles were hoping against hope would flourish this season. For some, injuries played a part. For others, maybe they were rated higher than they should have. The good news is that the Islanders have quite a few players either on the last year of their contracts or had signed only one-year deals. A guy like Josef Vasicek, who signed one of those deals, is likely a candidate to return next season. But with so many guys available this summer, the good news is that the Islanders can try and re-load again without worrying about dead money tied up in non-producers.