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The New York Islanders have been a bit of a sad sack organization ever since ol' Mad Mike came to town. But there are still reasons to find to hate them. Lets take a look, shall we?
Right off the bat, the owner is terrible. Wong got rich off of video streaming. So, he's also responsible for all of NHL.com's video streaming options. So the next time you wait for 30 second commercial to pass before watching a 10-second clip, just remember that your eyeballs are being sold to pay for DiPietro's contract. Your ad impressions hard at work. Gross, right? I hate that.
Another thing to hate is that the Islanders are a goon organization. It's been that way forever. Just look at this brawl from the playoffs that started their 4-year unbeaten playoff run:
You want hockey like the good old days, when guys didn't get concussions? Oh right, they still did. They just called it "getting your bell rung." But I can't hold one team responsible for a lack of accepted research. I can, however, blame them for ignoring that research through the present day. Can't say I totally hate what they did to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, but still...c'mon, guys. It's 2013.
The one thing that having a team with as many goons as they do does help with is tanking. Yep, the one redeeming thing about the Islanders (that John Tavares is incredibly fun to watch) is because they dove in the standings. They tanked. They dropped some skilled guys to Bridgeport, and moved some "tough" (bad) guys up to Nassau. It worked out, they got the pick and they got the star. Bravo, jerks. You sucked bad enough to get a great player. And they did it all with the lowest cap hit in the league. Capgeek doesn't go back to 07-08 but in 08-09 their supporting cast for Tavares averaged a 1.3 million cap hit. And that's with Doug Weight playing with more than 2.5 million in bonuses taking up space on the cap. Disgusting.
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons to hate the Islanders. There is one last thing: They're moving to Brooklyn. Sure, they'll be more convenient. But ticket prices are going to fucking skyrocket in the new building. And that's the worst thing. They're killing pile on the Isle.