Mike Milbury, former GM of the NY Islanders has stepped time as full-time senior vice-president of sports properties for the team.

Team owner Charles Wang had this to say about Milbury:

"Mike played a major role in getting the Islanders back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs three years in a row. Before I purchased the franchise and provided Mike with the stability and resources he never had in his early tenure, the Islanders were out of the playoffs for almost a decade. Worse than that, most years they didn't even have a chance when the season started. It was Mike who made the aggressive moves that put the Islanders back on the NHL map. Mike is also responsible for the Islanders careers of some of our fan favorites, including Rick DiPietro, Jason Blake and Trent Hunter, among many others."

TSN.CA also pointed out Milbury "worked under four ownership groups with the Islanders and hired six coaches - he coached the team on two occasions."

Milbury did face some difficult working conditions prior to Wang taking over the team, as he was often handcuffed financially and forced to dump some of his higher-paid players, but most Isles fans will remember the wild trades usually involving then-promising youngsters that earned him the nickname of "Mad Mike".

What might the roster of the NY Islanders look like today if Milbury kept most of the draft picks who went on to become stars on other clubs?

Only a handful of teams drafted better than Milbury from 1995 to 2000. Part of that was due to years of missing the playoffs and thus securing very high first round picks, but he showed a knack for drafting well regardless of where they were picking. He also acquired some good players from some of his trades.

Were it not for a series of owners who skimped on payroll and some outright dumb trades by Milbury, there might be a second dynasty on Long Island today. Consider the following roster:

Goal: Roberto Luongo, Defence: Bryan McCabe, Wade Redden, Zdeno Chara and Eric Brewer. Forwards: Olli Jokinen, JP Dumont, Todd Bertuzzi, Jason Spezza (selected by Ottawa with the first round pick moved by Milbury for Alexei Yashin), Tim Connolly, Taylor Pyatt, Raffi Torres, Michael Rupp.

He also passed up the chance to draft either Dany Heatley or Marian Gaborik in 2000 to select Rick DiPietro, which wouldn't have been necessary if he'd held onto Luongo.

Almost all of those players were moved, not because they were expensive to retain since almost all of them were just young, affordable players back then, but because Milbury just couldn't resist making deals.

Milbury meant well, but his moving of promising young assets in wild trades ultimately stunted the development of the Islanders thus preventing it from truly flourishing into a Cup contender once Wang took over the team. If he'd retained just half of those aforementioned players he traded away, the Islanders today might've been a Cup contender.

Instead, the Isles have been a marginal playoff team, saddled with the bloated contract of a fading Alexei Yashin, risking losing Jason Blake to free agency, and no closer to their glory days than they were during the dark days of the late 1990s.

Ultimately, Milbury's legacy is what might've been.