Sorting Out The Mess On Long Island

Caution: Man coming for your job may be closer than he appears.

Alan Hahn and Mark Herrman of Newsday are on the case when it comes to the debacle unfolding inside the New York Islanders. Hahn, the team's beat writer, has a few interesting tidbits that didn't make it into the first day's coverage of Neil Smith's dismissal as GM and Garth Snow's dramatic ascension to the top job at the hands of owner Charles Wang:

At the start, Smith seemed amenable to working without the total control that GMs traditionally wield. Wang said he noticed more and more that Smith was struggling with it. Smith signed five players at the start of free agency, including defensemen Brendan Witt and Tom Poti and center Mike Sillinger, but Wang said they were not Smith's signings exclusively. "It was a function of the staff coming together," he said.

One person who surprisingly came to Smith's defense, Wang said, was former general manager Mike Milbury, who has remained with the Islanders as senior vice president but is no longer involved in hockey operations. Wang said Milbury tried to convince him to give Smith more time. Wang said he couldn't wait.

I guess that means everyone gets to take the blame for those signings. But wait, there's more:

Snow, who turns 37 on July 28, approached Wang about the job in the spring during the initial GM search. Wang considered him a finalist, but chose Smith for his use of technology when planning the draft and in scouting players, which Wang thought would help the Islanders be more prepared for the NHL draft and free agency.

So much for having a "Moneypuck" general manager.

Herrman has a few more wrinkles when it comes to Lafontaine's exit:

LaFontaine had advised Wang to take 48 hours before making any final decision about Smith. He then suggested that the owner let the dust settle and not name a replacement today, the source said. After Wang ignored both bits of advice, LaFontaine "decided this was not the right time and place for him," the person said.

The unnamed person is an executive with another team that declined to be named. Speculate if you must. Herrman also got to devote a whole column to the unfolding horror show authored by Wang:

Wang was adamant about moving quickly to eliminate Smith. "If it doesn't work," the owner said, "face the music fast, guys" -- which sure wasn't his credo when Mike Milbury was the general manager.

Though the owner didn't use these precise words, he implied that Smith wasn't a team player. Ask anyone on the Islanders how much of a team player Alexei Yashin is, yet Wang doggedly keeps Yashin's cap-clogging salary on the payroll year after year.

In defending his non-chain of command -- coach Ted Nolan, Snow, and Bryan Trottier all are on the same rung, as LaFontaine was -- Wang said, "It works." He said that for proof, just look at how well things have gone in July -- the very month that he used as proof that Smith had to go.

And Herrman also confirms what many had suspected elsewhere -- that new head coach Ted Nolan is the one at the controls with the owner's ear, and Snow will be little more than a bright and engaging paper shuffler in the new triumverate with Nolan and player personnel director Trottier.

Hockey writer Jason Diamos of the New York Times, who if the tagline at the end of the piece is to be believed actually didn't leave the island of Manhattan to report on this story (neat trick), has some other details:

Wang said there were conflicts from the beginning with Smith. Even an issue as small as who was going to hire the equipment manager became contentious, Wang said.

When asked what he felt the general manager’s role was, Wang said it was to make trades, oversee the scouting staff and negotiate contracts. The rest, Wang said, was to be determined by consensus.

Smith apparently had trouble working with LaFontaine, 41, who played eight seasons with the Islanders.

How about that for competing storylines? In Newsday Lafontaine was fighting to help Smith keep his job, but in the Times it was Smith's inability to work with Lafontaine that helped lead to his ouster. Please also note that in Newsday that Herrman made sure to mention that one of Lafontaine's most admirable traits is his ability to get along with anybody.

Allan Muir at Sports Illustrated writes that Smith got the axe when he went against the rest of the committee when it made a ridiculous offer to bring Mike Peca back to Long Island. He also mentions that Pat Quinn, a personage with considerably more experience as a GM than Snow, was actually available -- though just about everyone else in the league would have questioned his sanity if he even took a phone call from Wang.

I'll have more in the morning, when those Internet slowpokes at the New York Post and the Daily News get around to posting their coverage online. In the meantime, click here for yesterday's mayhem -- covered as it happened in real time!

UPDATE: Boy, John Dellapina of the Daily News has really come through with some juicy stuff in his piece on Smith's firing. Let's dive right in:

But it still came as a bit of a surprise when Wang told Smith yesterday morning that he was making a change. There could well be a dispute over how much the Islanders owe Smith. The Daily News has learned that Smith, seeking a shorter-term deal than the three-year, $2.1-million pact Wang offered, never formally signed a contract.

This is an interesting point. In the Newsday piece by Hahn, he reported that Smith might seek legal action against the Islanders against a contract only worth about $300,000-400,000 per season over three years.

I love the first 24-36 hours after a story like this breaks. People still haven't gotten their stories straight, and the reporters on the beat are trying their level best to get hold of information that nobody else has.

Here's another gem:

At the NHL draft two weeks later, Smith raised some hackles at the Islanders' table by telling scouts that, having done their jobs, the decision-making was now in his hands. Sources close to the team say that Smith was upset that Nolan's two assistant coaches - Nolan's assistants in junior hockey Daniel Lacroix and Dan Flynn - and the club's minor league coach, Dan Marshall, were not his hires.

Wanting to beef up the Islanders' scouting staff, Smith also was rattled when Wang told him the team didn't need scouts.

I'm sure that went down well. Evan Grossman in the New York Post doesn't add much of substance, but what I'm really looking forward to is how Larry Brooks handles this in his next column. A story like this is tailor-made for Brooks. He should have some fun with it.

UPDATE: ESPN.com's EJ Hradek gets out the geiger counter and measures the intensity of the fallout.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Live, from the studios of Cablevision Public Access Channel 387 in Mineola, New York, it's WANGS WORLD!

After the show, be sure to stop by Dave Langevin's Donuts for coffee and a cruller.

Eric 12:05 AM

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