New York Islanders Expectations For Josh Bailey

The relationship between Josh Bailey and New York Islanders fans has always been a complicated one. Here’s what Islanders fans can expect from Bailey in the 2016 season.

It’s a pretty safe bet at this point that Josh Bailey will never live up to his expectations as the 9th overall pick in 2008. As a result the fans, including myself have been extremely hard on Josh Bailey.

He had 12 goals last year and he left you scratching your head on many other occasions through the year. Similarly to Brian Strait, Bailey became the punching bag last year, and has been for a while now.

Honestly, I didn’t expect him to be back for this upcoming year. I thought the Islanders would try to go in another direction, whether it was bringing someone else in or giving a kid a shot at the NHL level.

Although as time goes on it seems like Josh Bailey will continue on the second line, which is rather disheartening to hear. When you see championship level teams like the Penguins, and you see how deep they are it makes you take a step back and realize the Islanders aren’t quite there yet.

Bailey is realistically a bottom 6 forward. His unwillingness to shoot the puck in big spots makes him a liability as a top 6 forward.

I expect Bailey to put up similar numbers to which he did last year which means he will continue to be the scapegoat for this Islanders team. I will give him credit, he holds his own defensively but he doesn’t do enough offensively.

Josh Bailey and Mikhail Grabovski are two anchors holding this Islanders team down, realistically I would like to see the Islanders move on from these two but I don’t think that will be the case.

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To be fair he had a couple big goals in Game 3 of the Tampa Bay series so I will tip my cap to him on that. For what you can expect next year? More of the same, 12-15 goals and  somewhere around 35 points.