from Brett Cyrgalis of the New York Post,

“I think he was a young man when he got that job. Now he’s got white hair,” Ledecky said of Snow. “He cares deeply about the Islanders, and he cares deeply about putting a winner on the ice, and he cares deeply — we talk about it — I want, and he wants, and Scott wants John Tavares lifting that Cup over his head. That’s the purpose every single year. Now there are no excuses. In the past, you could say: salary cap, because of Nassau [County politics], constraints with this, that, and the other. We’re sending a clear message: He has the resources.”

“We like the progress that they’ve made, but there is a performance test, right?” Ledecky said. “They have to keep performing, and we define performing as progressing. We won our first playoff series in 23 years, we made it to the second round. If the puck bounced a couple ways differently, we would have made it to the semifinals. But we’re eighth in the league in points over the last two years, we made the final eight, and that’s the standard now. They have to progress. You have accountability. There is accountability for performance. The fans demand that.”

The fans also have demanded accountability from their new urban home, which was met with a significant amount of surliness at the start of their inaugural Brooklyn season. Yet as the playoffs progressed, the atmosphere got better, much to the delight of Ledecky and Malkin.

But the out-clause in the team’s contract with Barclays still looms heavy in the air, making it easy for the Islanders to leave after the 2018-19 season....

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