Garth Snow is free to speak his mind.
It has been five years, after all, since he was let go as Islanders general manager.
“I’m not under anyone’s control,” Snow said, and proceeded to speak his mind on how the Islanders have fared in recent years.
On John Tavares leaving the Islanders a month after Snow was fired in June 2018: “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
On the Islanders playing home games at Barclays Center, starting in 2015: “If Charles [Wang] didn’t go to Barclays Center, the Islanders wouldn’t have remained on Long Island. … But logistically it was a hot mess.”
On co-owner Scott Malkin: “There were things I’d recommend that got shot down. And then I chuckled when Lou [Lamoriello] got hired and well, they’re gonna go do the things I recommended.”
Snow’s 12-year tenure as Islanders GM covered a strange era in team history.
The Islanders hadn’t seen much on-ice success until the last few years, they dealt with a disastrous arena situation and they changed owners.
But Snow built the core that led them to conference finals berths in 2019-20 and 2020-21 and still makes up much of their team today.
That Tavares is not still a part of that core, though, sits badly with fans five years after he left for the Maple Leafs, with boos greeting him upon every return to Long Island.
That is not just because he left, but because he is seen to have led on the Islanders by keeping the possibility of re-signing open when they could have dealt him for assets at the 2018 trade deadline.
Snow said the decision to keep Tavares on Long Island at the time came from ownership.
“That decision by Scott Malkin was that we weren’t gonna trade him under any circumstances,” Snow said. “He was totally committed to re-signing him. I think the quote I had said is, ‘Are you willing to drive the car off the cliff if you go through the season and get to free agency?’ He was comfortable with that. That’s the bottom line.”
Though Lamoriello was the GM by the time Tavares actually left, Snow said there was little traction on a contract extension in 2017. The Islanders had earmarked about $10 million for Tavares, he said, but talks never got far, and Malkin had taken over negotiations.
“I feel so bad that [Tavares] gets trashed for something that wasn’t his fault,” Snow said. “The Islanders could have traded him if they wanted to, but that decision was made. So it’s not his fault the Islanders didn’t trade him.”
Malkin and Jon Ledecky, who bought controlling interest in the team from Wang in 2016, secured a deal for what became UBS Arena the season prior to Tavares’ departure.
But the ignominy of playing home games in Barclays Center, an arena not built for hockey, then splitting home games between Brooklyn and Nassau Coliseum in 2018-19 and 2019-20, hung over the Islanders during the interim.
“I think our winning percentage was pretty good at Barclays,” Snow said jokingly. “Maybe the opposing team was having the same issues trying to get into the rink that we were.”
The threat of relocation was real, and playing at Barclays helped the Islanders avoid it. But it was a high price to pay, as the commute from Northwell Health Ice Center, their practice facility, was disastrous, some fans could not see the whole ice from their seats and the playing surface was shoddy.
“Just the game days were not appealing to really anyone,” Snow said. “It was hard on the coaches, it was hard on the trainers, with the equipment, it wasn’t an easy situation. There were obviously issues with the ice.”
Malkin, Snow said, was more hands-on than Wang, though with Lamoriello as GM, he has been anything but.
Snow did not enjoy the same degree of independence, which could have contributed to the failure to re-sign Tavares.
“There’s gotta be trust,” he said. “Obviously Charles had trust in me. New guys come in, you gotta build trust. Especially if you’re gonna commit $10 [million] or $12 million, whatever it is, to a player. You have to be comfortable with your GM.”
Tavares was the highest-profile draft pick Snow made on the job — one of four top-overall picks the Islanders ever have made — but might not have been the most impactful.
In hindsight, Snow’s draft record was the best part of his record as GM, with a series of impact players after the first two rounds, including Anders Lee (2009, 152nd overall), Casey Cizikas (2009, 92nd overall), Adam Pelech (2012, 65th overall), Ilya Sorokin (2014, 95th overall) and Devon Toews (2014, 108th overall).
Despite some misses with high picks — Michael Dal Colle, Josh Ho-Sang and Griffin Reinhart come to mind — Snow also drafted Brock Nelson, Ryan Pulock, Mathew Barzal and Anthony Beauvillier in the first round over the years.
Sending Reinhart to the Oilers for a 2015 first and second, then picking Barzal with the first-rounder and trading the second in a deal to move up and land Beauvillier, stands out as arguably the best move of Snow’s tenure.
“We didn’t have a first- or second-round pick that year,” Snow said. “And we continued to go through the process, which was a credit to our scouting staff to stay ready cause you never know what’s gonna happen. … I just remember Barzal was a player that we had identified, and thankfully, he was there.”
Lee, at the time an average prospect who could have gone on to play football, was someone the Islanders had wanted to draft the year prior, Snow said.
“We called him from the floor and we couldn’t get a certainty that he was gonna commit to playing hockey,” Snow said, “ ’cause football was still an option for him.”
Snow said, however, he was pleasantly surprised Lee fell as far as the sixth round in 2009.
“I don’t think there was a time that when we were meeting and talking about him there was anything negative about him,” he said. “The only question we had is: Is he gonna play football or is he gonna play hockey?”
Thanks to his five-year payout, Snow has been out of the league since being let go, spending his time coaching the PAL Junior Islanders.
He said he plans to keep coaching them this year, but has talked to a few teams about front-office roles.
At least at the GM level, another shot won’t come this year, with every NHL job accounted for, but the door is open in the future.
“Just to me, it would be a fun experience to do it at the highest level again, at some point,” Snow said.
