Lamoriello, Trotz moving on from Isles’ Tavares era
If there was any lingering question that the Islanders are over the departure of captain John Tavares, it can now be squashed.
In the most declarative comments made since Tavares left for his hometown Maple Leafs earlier in the summer, team president Lou Lamoriello made it clear the organization has done more than just move on. It has left Tavares in the rubble of the past.
“There’s no aftermath. Players come and go,” Lamoriello told The Post at the Islanders golf outing Tuesday at Bethpage State Park.
“It’s different if they had won championships. It’s different if they had had a lot of success. They haven’t done much — and I don’t say that with any disrespect. Haven’t been to the playoffs the last couple years. Things haven’t worked out the way everybody would have liked them to, from what my understanding is.
“So, an aftermath? There’s no such thing in my mind. What the players we have here should be thinking about is not making the playoffs last year, and that’s what the goal should be. Teams win, not players. Individual players win some games, but teams with championships. And that’s what we have to create.”
Just in case there was any confusion, first-year coach Barry Trotz echoed those sentiments.
“I don’t think with us we mentioned John once, other than when we get asked,” Trotz said. “We move on. We’re not looking back, we’re looking forward.”
Tavares infamously ditched the Islanders in July when he decided to become an unrestricted free agent and sign a seven-year, $77 million deal with Toronto. The Islanders couldn’t get him to sign an extension at any point and then stubbornly didn’t try to trade Tavares before last season’s deadline. Thus, they allowed their No. 1-overall pick from the 2009 draft to walk away for nothing in return.
It has been a tough road for the once-proud franchise that has missed the playoffs for two years straight, made it just three times in the past 11 years and won just one postseason series going back to 1993.
But as Scott Malkin and Jon Ledecky now settle into their third year as majority owners, they have a new front office headed by Lamoriello and a new coach in Trotz. Lamoriello, of course, won three Stanley Cups while running the Devils from 1987-2015, and Trotz is coming off his first Stanley Cup victory as the coach of the Capitals last season.
The change from the regime of longtime general manager Garth Snow and neophyte head coach Doug Weight has already been monumental.
“The way Lou has put everything in place — everything has order to it; order and accountability,” Trotz said. “Once you have order, accountability and structure, it naturally puts discipline into the group, but it also takes out any doubt. I think there’s no, ‘What about this? What about that?’ That’s taken away. I think you can feel it. I think the players are excited. I’m excited.”