New York Islanders: Brock Nelson’s Increasing His Trade Value

Last night Brock Nelson netted his 19th goal of the year in the New York Islanders 5-4 loss. Here’s why his recent hot streak is actually good.

Like the sun rising every day, you can pencil in Brock Nelson for 20 goals a season. He’s done it the last three years with the New York Islanders and if he nets one more in the next four games he’ll make it four years in a row.

If you told me in December and January that he would find his way to 20 goals I wouldn’t believe you. He went from December 11 to January 20 without a goal, it felt like he would never find a goal again with that cold streak.

Yet, here we are just like every other year with Brock Nelson somehow, someway just one goal away from the 20 plateau.

Of course, we would’ve liked to see Brock Nelson hot when it mattered, like in December and January when the team still had a chance. But one positive of these hockey-reference, stat padding goals is Brock’s trade value.

Like a stock hot on the market, that baby is rising. Since we watch Brock on a nightly basis we know how streaky and frustrating he can be. But to the ill-advised bystander, they can see 20 goals over the last four years and still have hope for a depth scorer in there.

The Islanders have so many needs and flipping Brock Nelson in a trade for one of those needs seems to make the most sense. Even though, the Islanders have no more use for a Brock Nelson or a Michael Dal Colle, they still hold some value, if packaged correctly.

The Isles need help defensively and in goal so if you package together Brock Nelson, Dal Colle and one of the two first-round picks the Islanders can hopefully obtain a top-four defenseman that they so desperately need.

You can then replace Brock as the third line center with Anthony Beauvillier creating a young, exciting, and cheap ($2.7 million combined cheap) line of Bellows – Beauvillier – Ho-Sang.

Next: The Four Truths of Ho-Sang's Comments

With a few simple moves, outside of firing Garth Snow and re-signing John Tavares (that’s not so simple), the Islanders can get themselves back in contention by moving on from guys like Brock and bringing in help on the blue line and in the crease. It’s something that has to be done, and something I’m sure Islander fans will be happy about.