Defiant Lou Lamoriello lays out post-John Tavares Islanders plan

It has not been the easiest week for Lou Lamoriello and the Islanders, but they are doing what they can to move forward and not let the loss of John Tavares crush them.

Certainly, that’s easier said than done when the franchise player decided to bolt for his hometown Maple Leafs when free agency opened Sunday. In the ensuing days, Lamoriello has tried to bolster his roster with character players, and he hopes that can help reestablish a winning and professional culture to the organization.

“First of all, we did everything we possibly could to keep John,” Lamoriello said on SiriusXM Radio on Thursday, his first public comments since Tavares left. “He’s been an exceptional player for the Islanders, and he’s a quality player. But he now is with another team. That’s the past. What we’re doing right now is trying to get knowledge of who we are — that is, myself learning more about each and every one of the players here.”

Lamoriello took over as president on May 22, and within two weeks, he relieved general manager Garth Snow and coach Doug Weight. On June 21, he was able to hire new coach Barry Trotz just days after he had won the Stanley Cup behind the Capitals’ bench.

The thought was that it showed a newfound commitment to winning, and that might keep Tavares with the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2009. But it wasn’t, and now the Islanders have to get on with trying to improve.

“We’ll get Barry and I and our staff will get prepared for next year,” Lamoriello said. “The one thing I’ve always said, and I’ve said it repeatedly, individual players win games but teams with championships.”

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Of course, Lamoriello has extensive experience with winning, having brought home three Stanley Cups during his reign as GM of the Devils. He also kick-started the rebuild in Toronto, where they have one of the brightest young teams in the league led by well-respected coach Mike Babcock — also one of the reasons Tavares found it such an attractive place to play.

But Lamoriello is not treating this like a total rebuild, as he did in Toronto. Instead, he sees some good core pieces already on the roster and is hoping to improve the team more on the fly.

“In Toronto, we had to really break it right down and get to the core and just see who wanted to be a part of it for a lot of different reasons,” Lamoriello said. “I think it’s different here. There is more talent here at this given time from the original core. So I think it’s different. It’s not a breakdown. It’s finding out exactly how high the level is of the players you do have here.

“There are a couple of exceptional hockey players here, in my opinion, as far as their talent. We have an exceptional coach, no different than what we had in Toronto. You look at it totally different as far as how you go forward.”

That attitude led Lamoriello to add a couple veteran players, including the signing of 31-year-old winger Leo Komarov to what most considered was a very expensive, four-year, $12 million contract. Lamoriello said, “There’s no question that you look at that contract and you might say you’re overpaying for a player.” But he cited Komarov’s “intangibles” in the locker room and added one more caveat about contracts in general.

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“I haven’t met a player that we haven’t overpaid for yet,” he said, “and they smile when I say that.”

The team also added goalie project Robin Lehner, which doesn’t rule out the possibility Lamoriello still tries to trade for a clear-cut No. 1. As expected, Trotz also added Lane Lambert to his staff as an associate coach after the two worked together in Washington and for years in Nashville.

So maybe it’s not a total rebuild, but the Islanders sure are going to look different — and Lamoriello hopes it’s for the better.

“It certainly is a lot easier when you have players that have been together and have extra talents,” Lamoriello said. “But the team is what you have to do.”