[TheScorpion]

Over the last several months I've spent time formulating a strategy for turning the Islanders into a consistent contender in this league.

In my eyes, this league has two main assets to weaponize:

- Cap space
- Draft capital

With the right combination of these two assets, you can do anything in this league. You can acquire anyone and anything from any team in a desperate situation.

When I first committed to rebuilding the Islanders, my number one goal was to re-acquire my first and increase its value. I gave some thought to using the pick but my main idea was really to rehabilitate the value of the pick — and the Islanders organization.

An already good team can exist without a defined future — it is in its own future. But a mediocre (or worse) team with no defined future, like the pre-rebuild Islanders, will only exist in stasis. Not only were the Islanders a very un-special team, we were also a team in debt (owing two firsts at the season's end) and with no concrete plan to resolve that indebtedness.

We had spent a great deal to acquire older players like Robin Lehner and Erik Karlsson with the mindset that these pieces could be flipped in the future to recoup the acquisition cost — and nothing more. Stasis. We didn't really give any thought to the idea of rehabilitating and increasing the value of assets while also taking advantage of cap space.

Previously, we valued players over cap space. But it's become clear that cap space is the most prized tool of all. It can give you the leverage to acquire free assets. And it should never be wasted on players whose value does not match or exceed the value of the allotted cap, itself.

In a lost year like this for our team, cap space can be leveraged in buyouts, particularly on players with long-term contracts. Contending teams have the incentive to part with toxic contracts to free space for assets of more value, and asset-poor teams can take advantage of this to acquire what is essentially free capital. We recently did this with our trade to acquire Brendan Brisson.

So. Where has this period of turnover led us?

First and foremost: the Islanders still owe two first-round picks in this year's draft. We owe a top-26 pick to Washington and a top-28 pick to Toronto. But we feel that we're in a pretty comfortable position to meet both of those requirements with our new collection of draft picks.

We possess:

- Phoenix's 2021 1st
- Our own 2021 2nd
- Chicago's 2021 2nd
- Calgary's 2021 2nd
- Phoenix's 2022 2nd
- Chicago's 2021 5th
- Washington's 2021 5th

These picks are going to help us to fix our debt and they will also shape our future — a future without owed picks and conditions. They do far more harm than good.

We now also possess a young core of forwards, including:

- Sean Couturier, our new captain.
- Alex Tuch
- Shane Pinto
- Conor Garland
- Brendan Brisson
- Casey Mittelstadt
- Ty Smilanic
- Danil Gushchin
- Alexander Khovanov
- Yegor Sharangovich
- Alex Laferriere
- Jansen Harkins
- Arttu Ruotsalainen

I feel like these forwards, and others, provide the team with a very strong foundation going forward.

On defense, it gets trickier, but I like the upside demonstrated by these players:

- Juuso Riikola
- Dean Kukan
- Nikita Nesterov
- Matt Benning
- William Lagesson
- Ian Moore
- Jacob Middleton
- Alexander Nikishin
- Thimo Nickl
- Jordan Gross
- Noel Hoefenmayer

Defense is our main area of need right now. We're looking to acquire defensive players who can help us in the future.

In net, we will likely move forward beyond this year with a proven veteran, but we have also had success in years' past with UFA signings (most notably Pavel Francouz) and we're hoping that one of these players can become a valuable asset for us:

- Tyler Wall
- Kevin Mandolese
- Dylan Ferguson

We're very excited to see what Wall, specifically, can do in the AHL this year.

Where does that leave the rest of our players?

Here is a comprehensive list of our pending UFAs.

- Derick Brassard, age 32, 67 overall
- Eric Staal, age 35, 70 overall
- Matt Martin, age 31, 60 overall
- Danny DeKeyser, age 30, 65 overall
- Nick Leddy, age 29, 69 overall
- Travis Hamonic (AHL), age 30, 70 overall
- Cam Talbot, age 33, 82 overall

We would like to get future assets for these players if possible but it may prove difficult to trade all of them. Indeed, we also have an incentive to be better — bonus cap calculations are right around the corner.

If you have an offer for any of these pending UFAs, let me know — let's hammer something out.