Mad Mike Departs

On a day that would be called on of the most ironic I can remember, Mike Milbury wil be leaving the New York Islanders front office after he stepped down from his VP position almost a year after being replaced as GM. The Ironic part of the day is that the man whom Milbury replaced 12 years ago, Don Maloney, was just hired by the Phoenix Coyotes to be their new GM.

Milbury will always be remembered by Islanders fans as "Mad Mike", a name he called himself on draft day 2000, when he traded 2 top goaltending prospects (Roberto Luongo and Kevin Weekes), and a forward prospect (Olli Jokinen), and passed on future all stars Dany Heatley and Marian Gaborik to select Rick DiPietro and acquire Raffi Torres, Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish.

Milbury has traded some of the Islanders most prized prospects over the years (Bryan McCabe, Bryan Berard, Wade Redden, Todd Bertuzzi, Jokinen, Luongo, Weekes, Zdeno Chara, Tim Connolly, Taylor Pyatt, JP Dumont and the list goes on). Whats sad is the good things Milbury did over the years go un-noticed. The acquision of Trent Hunter for a little know prospect before Hunter had even signed with Anaheim, rescuing a Jason Blake from the shuttle between Los Angeles and Manchester, the hiring of Peter Laviolette (even though he undid that by firing him 2 years later at the request of the team). The drafting of DiPietro was a good thing though Milbury went about it all wrong. If he had done his homework he would have found out that Atlanta had no intention of drafting Ricky with the second pick. At that point they might have been able to draft both DiPietro and Dany Heatley. At that point the Islanders could have walked away with DiPietro, Heatley, Kvasha and Parrish.....doesn't look as bad as how it actually went down eh? (I know I know....I rubbing salt in the wounds....but I suffered through this too!)...

Good Luck to Mike on his future endevors....he always provided a smile with some of his remarks and quotes through the years....(the one about Ziggy Palffy's agent Paul Krause depriving a village of a pretty good idiot is one of my favorites).