from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

- ... The Islanders have a pretty fair collection of young assets courtesy of the Garth Snow regime. Expect Lamoriello to dangle them — maybe to rent Matt Duchene as immediate support for Mat Barzal, maybe to rent dangerous sniper Mark Stone, maybe to rent depth on defense by acquiring either Jake Muzzin or Alec Martinez. Maybe even both defensemen — or have you forgotten 2003, when the offense-needy Devils acquired defenseman Igor Tverdovsky and Richard Smehlik in advance of winning their third Cup?

I don’t know exactly whom Lamoriello will target, and, honestly, neither does anyone else who might tell about it and expect to live. But I know this. The Islanders will be aggressive on the market, and likely well ahead of the deadline.

- Even if the Blue Jackets put pending free agent Sergei Bobrovsky on the market, trading for the goaltender represents a major gamble for a contender. This has nothing to do with either his underwhelming postseason record or his breach of etiquette after being pulled from a game a couple of weeks ago, when, we’re told, he had dressed in his street clothes and had boarded the team bus before the match had even been completed.

Rather, it is history that makes a deal so dicey. Trades of marquee goaltenders proximate to the deadline are extremely rare. Ryan Miller, who went from Buffalo to St. Louis in 2014, is only example this decade, and look how that turned out with the netminder crashing and burning in a six-game first-round defeat to Chicago in which he had a .897 save percentage.

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