Year 9 of the Scott Malkin, John Ledecky Islanders ownership group is over, and the dynamic has become crystal clear by now.
Ledecky, the minority owner, is the boots-on-the-ground, shaking-hands-and-kissing-babies figurehead who has forged a compatible relationship with a fanbase whose appreciation had been overflowing, but now has been wavering.
The Islanders just completed their second playoff-less season in the last four years. The other two seasons during that stretch have provided quick first-round exits at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes.
A franchise that made back-to-back Stanley Cup semifinals in 2020 and 2021 under the stewardship of president of hockey operations and general manager Lou Lamoriello has regressed, and the feeling is that Malkin will have to make a rare appearance to rectify things.
Malkin, the veteran real estate investor, has moved in the shadows throughout his tenure as the Islanders’ owner. He is seemingly in it for the land after getting UBS Arena built on the grounds of Belmont Park, just as much as the actual hockey.
This is why hiring Lamoriello was so vital. The Hall-of-Famer had Malkin’s complete trust to carry out day-to-day hockey operations.
Whether or not it is waning truly remains to be seen. But there have been rumblings about growing unease from the Islanders’ majority owner, specifically from NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman on his 32 Thoughts podcast.
“People who know [Malkin] say he is really, really smart … but also very understated,” Friedman said. “He’s not a guy who feels that he needs to be the dominant person in the room, but after the kind of 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?'”
Some of Lamoriello’s recent signings have failed to launch. Pierre Engvall rode the carousel between the starting lineup, the press box as a healthy scratch, and the minor leagues in just the second year of his seven-year contract.
Anthony Duclair, who signed a four-year deal last summer as a first-line winger to join forces with Bo Horvat and Mathew Barzal, scored just seven goals in 44 games — undone by an injury that cost him 28 games, questionable play that drew the ire of head coach Patrick Roy, and then his mysterious departure from the team in the final weeks of the regular season.
Defenseman Scott Mayfield struggled to secure playing time down the stretch of the second year of his seven-year contract.
Couple that with an onslaught of injuries and regressions from other key players, and the Islanders had their worst season since 2017-18, a year before Lamoriello arrived. As a result, attendance at UBS Arena is down for the third consecutive season. The 15,979 average fans per game this year was a 3.6% drop from last year, providing the lowest total attendance in the four-year-old arena’s history.
Perhaps those figures will prompt Malkin to take action. After all, the only way to put butts in the seats at a consistent clip is to put a contending team on the ice.
