Uncertainty lingers as NY Islanders await direction from majority owner Scott Malkin

Neither head coach Patrick Roy nor President and GM Lou Lamoriello spoke to the media at the New York Islanders' clean-out day on Saturday. That isn't a departure from recent seasons, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything other than they'll schedule a later time for a dedicated session with reporters. However, there is also the potential that ownership, and specifically, majority owner Scott Malkin, is still evaluating whether his franchise is going in the right direction.

On the 32 Thoughts Podcast, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman spoke, for the first time, in some detail about Malkin, who may be looking at things in a more introspective way than in recent years. "I think one of the biggest questions is how the majority owner, Scott Malkin, feels," Friedman said.

While co-owner Jon Ledecky has been the face of ownership, attending all community events, meeting with the media, and greeting fans, it's Malkin who holds the most weight and is the ultimate decision-maker when it comes to whether Lamoriello will return to run the franchise for a seventh season. Makin has reverence for Lamoriello, and rightfully so. He's a Hall of Fame hockey executive, and his luring of Lamoriello to run the Islanders in 2018 turned around the franchise's culture, leading to the most successful Islanders' seasons in nearly 30 years.

However, after missing the playoffs in two of the last four seasons and experiencing swift first-round exits in the other two, the question of whether Lamoriello is the right man to move the organization forward is in question, and it's Malkin's job to provide an answer.

"People who know him say he is really, really smart ... but also very understated," Friedman stated. "He's not a guy who feels that he needs to be the dominant person in the room, but after the kinda year like this one, especially with some of the contracts that haven't gone well, I think he's become a little more involved with where we are going, and how do we get there?"

Friedman added that while the Islanders have some things in motion, including Kyle Palmieri's extension and talks of contracts for Alexander Romanov and Noah Dobson, it will be hard to get a complete picture on the team until Malkin determines if the way things are unfolding is the way they should continue to be allowed to unfold.