Islanders free agent LHD options are sadly quite limited

With Ryan Murray signing with the Colorado Avalanche, the New York Islanders options to add a left-handed defenseman through the free-agent market are, well, to put it lightly, limited.

And look the Islanders aren’t looking to add any left-handed defenseman. Ideally, they’re looking for a puck-moving, more offensive-minded defenseman to replace Nick Leddy. And as you can imagine, they aren’t in abundance. Or even available at all at this point in the free agency window.

New York Islanders options on LHD free-agent market are…slim

According to CapFriendly, there are ten left-handed free agents on the market right now. None of the ten names on that list are what you’d call “offensive-defensemen”.

One of the remaining ten players is former Islander Braydon Coburn, who played three games and averaged just over 14 minutes of ice-time for the Isles this season. It’s hard to see the Isles wanting to bring him back another year. So really, that leaves nine players on the LHD free-agent marketplace.

And when you look at that list none of them are puck movers, none are offensive-minded – they combined for 39 points over 195 games (0.2 pts/game), and none move the needle forward for the Isles.

Zdeno Chara might be the only name on that list that might excite fans. But that’s not because of his puck-moving and offensive abilities so much as it is for a reunion between a legend of the sport and the team that mistakingly traded him way 20 years ago.

And maybe that works. While the Isles are likely looking for a puck mover, perhaps a more stable defense-first lefty might do the trick and have one of their righties carry more of the offensive burden.

How about a Chara-Dobson pair with Noah doing some of the heavy lifting offensively? It could work, and who better to learn from than Zdeno Chara? Charlie McAvoy surely benefited from it.

Now the one big downfall here is that the left side of the Isles bottom four would be a combined 82 years old (Chara at 44 and Greene at 38). That’s a bit long in the tooth, no?

All to say, that the Islanders options for a left-handed defenseman on the free-agent market are slim to none. So I guess Lou Lamoriello is looking at the trade market for that puck-moving lefty.