Summertime, and the livin' ain't easy

“They say the game is 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. … I don’t know if that’s 100 percent true, but…” — Masi Marjamaki

I love this time of year… I hate this moment in this time of year.

Hung out in the room today with the trainers, with a few players coming in and out, Marjamaki, Hamilton (we compared headaches), Collins, Thompson, Cloutier. A lot had meetings down on the Island today; many are already gone.

It’s the last time I’ll be in that room until September, maybe October. You do the same thing, go to the same place, see the same people every day, and then all of a sudden it’s over. It’s very weird.

It’s always a long summer, no matter how the season ends. But here it begins.

The future. The future is so up in the air right now, because there’s a vacancy at the top. One hopes Mike Milbury’s successor will look at what happened this year and recognize the job Dave Baseggio, Lane Lambert and Pat Bingham did here. One hopes he’ll give a good look at a lot of the players who made the last three-quarters of this season so successful here, consider re-signing them. One hopes he’ll stick with the staff that is here.

But that successor has the prerogative not to, so until that successor has a name, a lot remains uncertain.

Best I can figure, and I might be off on one or two guys, here’s what it looks like:

SIGNED FOR 2006-07 — Jeff Tambellini, Robert Nilsson, Bruno Gervais, Luciano Aquino, Blake Comeau, Masi Marjamaki, Jeremy Colliton, Matt Koalska, Steve Regier
RESTRICTED FREE AGENTS — Denis Grebeshkov, Paul Flache, Jody Robinson, Cole Jarrett, Sean Bergenheim, Justin Papineau, Ryan Caldwell
UNRESTRICTED FREE AGENTS of one stripe or another — Mike Jarmuth, Jeff Hamilton, Rob Collins, Joe Tallari, Tomi Pettinen, Allan Rourke, Mark Lee, Frederic Cloutier, Wade Dubielewicz, Chris Madden, Chris Thompson, Harlan Pratt, David Masse
UNSIGNED DRAFT PICK — Evgeny Tunik
ELIGIBLE FOR NHL DRAFT — Peter Tsimikalis
SIGNED BUT CAN’T PLAY FOR BRIDGEPORT — Dustin Kohn, Ryan O’Marra

RFAs must of course be tendered a qualifying offer in order for the Islanders to keep their rights.

Michael Fornabaio