The New York Islanders have set their training camp roster and I think for the most part, we'll see some good competition for spots in the line-up, since it looks to me that there are quite a few bubble players on here, giving real hope to some of the team's bluechip prospects.The Islanders have already hit rock bottom in the last little while and now they finally have some management in there that can build out of the draft, although that is seemingly slow, by comparisons of some teams in the league who ramped it up considerably. Nevertheless, some of those journeyman players like Jon Sim, PA Parenteau, Zenon Konopka, Mark Eaton, Milan Jurcina and Radek Martinek, might find their way off the list.
With all that possible bubble action, it is hard to really get a good feel of how the team is going to play out this year, let alone make it through training camp. Fortunately for my Selection Sheet, there are enough players on this list to occupy the spaces and still be relatively accurate.
| Forwards | Defense | Goalies |
| John Tavares | Mark Streit | Dwayne Roloson |
| Kyle Okposo | James Wisniewski | Rick DiPietro |
| Matt Moulson | Jack Hillen | |
| Frans Nielsen | Bruno Gervais | |
| Blake Comeau | Mark Eaton | |
| Josh Bailey | Andrew MacDonald | |
| Trent Hunter | Milan Jurcina | |
| Robbie Schremp | Radek Martinek | |
| Jon Sim | ||
| Doug Weight | ||
| PA Parenteau | ||
| Zenon Konopka | ||
| Justin DiBenedetto | Calvin de Haan | Mikko Koskinen |
| Robin Figren | Travis Hamonic | Nathan Lawson |
| Trevor Gillies | Mark Katic | Kevin Poulin |
| Michael Haley | Anton Klementyev | |
| Andy Hlbert | Dustin Kohn | |
| Rob Hisey | Dylan Reese | |
| Jesse Joensuu | ||
| Kirill Kabanov | ||
| Tomas Marcinko | ||
| Matt Martin | ||
| Nino Niederreiter | ||
| Rhett Rakhashani | ||
| Tony Romano | ||
| David Ullstrom | ||
| Jeremy Yablonski |
Possibly the best argument to keeping so many bubble players on the Summer roster was to try and bump up the annual salary cap number projections. Currently, I have the Islanders sitting with 12 forwards, eight defense, two goalies and two big buyouts and they are just a shade over the salary cap floor at $43.8 million, but they do have some top end prospects that would carry some pretty good bonuses, ensuring that the Islanders are safely above the cap floor.
I'm not sure if there are many Islanders I would take out of necessity this year, but I think I would have a go at some of their talent, if it worked out in their favour. John Tavares, Kyle Okposo and Mark Streit should be locks to be drafted, while there are a number of wild cards that are waiting in the weeds, possibly trying to make a splash. If the number of bubble players is quite big and the youth that is coming up makes it this year, I might be inclined to give one of them a shot. No more than one though, you don't want to load up on rookies from one team.
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