New York Islanders Metropolitan Division Stronger After Free Agency

The NHL’s free agency window is now open and the New York Islanders division has seen a flurry of activity. Is it worse or better? We’ll leave that up to you to decide. At the very least, the Metropolitan Division is more interesting going into 2017-18.

It seems clear that the New York Islanders have improved; the question is to what extent did they improve? The Ryan Strome for Jordan Eberle trade is a clear win for the Isles; they get a legit scorer to go on the right wing of John Tavares.

In a “down year” Eberle still scored 20 goals and put up 51 points something that Ryan Strome has never done. With all due respect to Strome, he isn’t on the same level of talent as Eberle. Strome put up that 50 point season in 2015 but has regressed over the last two years.

Even if Strome bounces back in Edmonton this is still a win for the Islanders if Eberle’s production is what we expect it to be.

New York Islanders Off-Season Moves

Then on the flipside of the coin, there was the Travis Hamonic trade. Garth sent Hammer packing for Calgary and in return got some future draft picks. This actually makes the Islanders slightly worse for this year but can have potential benefits in the future.

I for one would like to see Garth use one of these new assets in a trade to help the team out for now rather than the future. If Garth did that the Isles could exponentially improve.

If the season started today and this was the opening roster that the New York Islanders are going with then it’s okay to assume they will finish with more points in 2017-2018. But comparatively, how do they, fair against the other Metropolitan Division teams?