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One of the most genuinely delightful stories of the current National Hockey League season is surely the presence of the New York Islanders in the playoff race. The Islanders were the odds-on choice of many to spend another season in the nether regions of the standings, thanks to last summer's odd-ball shenanigans — the hiring and firing of Neil Smith in a 40-day span; a 15-year contract awarded a 24-year-old goaltender named Rick DiPietro; and the decision to promote back-up goalie Garth Snow to the general manager's position, despite no previous front-office experience.

But Ted Nolan — back from a decade-long exile — has proven to be an effective coach, Snow has done a decent job as he learns the general manager's ropes on the fly; and the Islanders proved that an old truism of mine — that, to win in the NHL, you need NHLers — still applies, even in these salary-cap days.

The fact that the Islanders added players from the second tier of unrestricted free agents — experienced, able NHLers such as Mike Sillinger, Brendan Witt and Sean Hill — made a significant contribution to their success, especially on a Nolan-coached team, which generally relies heavily on a strong work ethic. These sorts of players added an element of professionalism to the team, a quality that was seriously lacking beforehand. Others found their way to Long Island simply because no one else offered them a contract — Viktor Kozlov has made no secret of his limited options as the primary reason he signed on. Seeing the prospect of your career slip away can provide all sorts of extra motivation, even for the most chronically flighty of players.

As a first-year manager, Snow kept a fairly low profile for much of the season. He did a decent job of clearing away payroll early, dumping Mike York and Alexei Zhitnik onto the Philadelphia Flyers for cheaper alternatives — Randy Robitaille and Freddy Meyer IV — without missing a beat. In hindsight, would the Islanders have been better off keeping Zhitnik longer, so they could flip him to the Atlanta Thrashers for Grade-A prospect Braydon Coburn? Maybe.

Snow unexpectedly stepped up the pace of his wheeling and dealing at the trade deadline, adding two players — Ryan Smyth from Edmonton and Richard Zednik from Washington — without subtracting anyone from his current roster, thus bolstering the Islanders on paper for the stretch drive and maybe a healthy run in the playoffs.

That, incidentally, hasn't happened for quite some time. One of the last great dynasties (the Islanders won four consecutive Stanley Cups between 1980 and 1983), they have not won so much as a playoff round since 1993 (when they upset the heavily favoured Pittsburgh Penguins, then a two-time champion, en route to the Eastern Conference finals, where they lost to Montreal). Since then, the Islanders have missed the playoffs eight times and been eliminated in the first round four other times.

A playoff berth — and more importantly, a series win — would help restore some of the organization's long-gone credibility and lustre.

The real test for Snow will come in the summer, however, when Smyth, Zednik and Jason Blake, their leading scorer, all need to be signed to new contracts. If Smyth breaks the bank — he'll need $6-million per season from the Islanders to get the same spending power that $5.4-million from the Oilers would provide — does that mean Blake is going elsewhere? Apart from DiPietro, no one has mattered more to the Islanders success during the past two seasons than Blake, who will likely score 40 goals this year after a 28-goal, 57-point under-the-radar screen season for last year's non-playoff team.

With owner Charles Wang at the controls, anything is possible — perhaps both Smyth and Blake will receive the sort of long-term commitment that the Islanders have become infamous for. But if they miss the playoffs or exit meekly in the opening round and all three players flee in the summer, the Islanders will effectively be back at square one — with Alexei Yashin's monstrous contract acting as a millstone and most of their skill deploying an exit strategy.

It's why there is always a danger in taking a short-term snapshot — this year's unexpectedly effective season — to assess the long-range impact of the Islanders' moves and subsequent progress. Just as there was a rush to bury them last summer, there is now a stampede to praise them as a result of their unexpected rise.

The reality may well fall somewhere in between. So let's wait to see how things unfold — this spring, this summer, next fall, three years down the road — before determining how much of the Islanders' progress is genuine, and how much is just a short-term blip on the radar screen.

THIS AND THAT: Sergei Fedorov hasn't exactly come back to haunt the Anaheim Ducks, the team that traded him (and his huge contract) away to the Columbus Blue Jackets last year, but there is little doubt about his versatility. When the Blue Jackets played last week's game against Anaheim with four regulars on defence missing because of injury, Fedorov — normally a centre — dropped back and played defence in a 5-4 Columbus win, logging more than 26 minutes of ice time and finishing at plus-one. Fedorov played defence for a time in his Detroit Red Wings days, whenever coach Scotty Bowman wanted him thinking more on the ice. Right now, Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock is planning to keep Fedorov back there, at least in the short term, because he moves the puck so well, a quality Columbus lacks from its collection of rearguards, especially with Bryan Berard not playing. Meanwhile, the player the Ducks acquired in the Fedorov deal, Francois Beauchemin, a defenceman, chipped in two goals for Anaheim in the OT loss and is playing 25-and-a-half minutes per night as their de facto No. 3 defenceman. Beauchemin earns $500,000 per season, one reason the Ducks can afford to spend a combined $13-million on Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer. Fedorov makes $6.08 million . . .

Colorado kept its slim playoff hopes alive with a home-ice win over Calgary, keyed partly by Paul Stastny's game-winning goal (giving him a point in an astonishing 19 consecutive games) and strong work in goal from Peter Budaj, the 24-year-old Slovak, who has turned Jose Theodore into an overpaid afterthought by winning six of his last seven starts and helping the Avs earn 13 out of 14 points in that stretch. Like Florida riding Ed Belfour's 42-year-old bones for all they're worth, as long as they maintain a mathematical chance at making the playoffs, the Avalanche will entrust the job to Budaj. The larger question is, does the Avalanche have the courage to buy out the final year of Theodore's $5.33-million contract, leaving the job squarely in Budaj's hands? The Avalanche have done a lot of things right this season to undo the damage of the last few years of front-office mismanagement (signing Pierre Turgeon and Patrice Brisebois, just to name two oddball decisions by ex-GM Pierre Lacroix). Stastny's been excellent; Budaj is solid; and Wojtek Wolski (No. 4 in rookie scoring) hasn't been bad either. Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, the Penguins' excellent rookie pair, have been getting most of the attention this season — and for good reason. Both have been exceptional. But as of Friday morning, there isn't a lot separating the dynamic duos statistically. The Penguins' rookie pair has managed 112 points (74 by Malkin, 38 by Staal); the Avalanche duo 111 (67 by Stastny, 44 by Wolski) …

Currently ninth in the Western Conference standings, the Avalanche are hovering on the edge of the playoff race, thanks to Calgary's ongoing inability to win on the road (two more losses this week, to the Avs and the Stars). The net result was that Calgary's lead over Colorado was down eight points through Friday, with the Avalanche holding a game in hand. But here's the kicker. Colorado only needs to close within two points of the Flames by the 81st game of the season to have a chance of overhauling them in the standings and grabbing that final playoff spot. The reason: The teams will play a make-up game on the final day of the season (Apr. 8), one that is not listed on your official NHL schedule, after a previous meeting was cancelled back in December because of a snowstorm. If Colorado can get within two points and then defeat Calgary on the final day of the season, it will have the first tie-breaker (most wins) in its favour. So the Flames are not home free yet, especially when you consider that they have just five games remaining at the Pengrowth Saddledome, three of them this coming week, against Minnesota, Detroit and their current nemesis, Nashville. On the road, the Flames are a disaster, with only nine wins in 35 games, tied with Los Angeles and Florida for the fewest in the league …

Speaking of teams that had better be careful of their tenuous grip on a playoff berth, the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes did themselves no favours by dropping a 3-2 decision to the injury-riddled New Jersey Devils the other night. Carolina finally got desperate in the third period and managed 23 shots against Martin Brodeur, but couldn't complete the comeback. The Hurricanes are starting ex-Lightning netminder John Grahame in place of the injured Cam Ward and they are running out of time, with just 10 games to go in the season. Grahame went through a similar situation last year, when the Lightning just managed to squeak into the playoffs, in the season after Tampa won the Stanley Cup, so he has something of a frame of reference to pass on to his teammates. Grahame, on the Hurricanes' plight, to the Raleigh News-Observer: "We need to have 100 per cent desperation all the time to get done what we need to do." …

Most of Detroit's playoff hopes hinge on two things — Dominik Hasek's health and the fact that they have attracted little attention as a Stanley Cup contender this season, even after sweeping a home-and-home series from the Nashville Predators. The one unsettling issue is the status of Henrik Zetterberg, their leading goalscorer (with 33 in 63 games), who is currently out with a back problem. Officially, he has an inflamed disc in his back; is not scheduled to accompany the Wings through their Western Canada odyssey; and is hoping to get playing just before the end of the regular season, assuming he doesn't have any setbacks in the interim. Zetterberg generally gets lumped in with teammate Pavel Datsyuk as a playoff underachiever, but anyone who watched last year's series against the Oilers would have to give him a pass for that one. Zetterberg scored six goals in six games and played well; it was the rest of the team that failed to provide the necessary support — and their goaltending was decidedly suspect …

Trying to get a fix on what's happening in Nashville, after the Predators dropped both ends of a home-and-home series with the Red Wings, is difficult, given that they have so many key players out with injuries. Peter Forsberg may play Saturday against Dallas; he's missed six games with a so-called upper-body injury which presumably is different from the foot issues that kept him on the sidelines for much of the year in Philadelphia. Steve Sullivan, the ex-Leaf, is bothered by a back ailment and is taking his time, so that he'll be ready for the playoffs. Two other key forwards, Martin Erat (knee) and Scott Hartnell (foot), are out for extended periods; the Preds will be happy to get them both back in time for the playoffs …

Interesting thought communicated by Oilers coach Craig MacTavish to the Edmonton Journal about the effectiveness of the Minnesota Wild's Derek Boogaard. Boogaard has been responsible for knocking three Oilers players out of the lineup with injuries this season (Marty Reasoner, Ales Hemsky and Ladislav Smid). At 6-foot-7, he is a towering effective agitator with OK skills — enough at any rate, to become Jacques Lemaire's favourite project this season. Like a lot of players who come up as underskilled toughians, if Boogaard can get just a little bit better every season, maybe he can evolve into a Marty McSorley type — someone who gives you a physical and a playing dimension. MacTavish on Boogaard: "Totally concerned about him. He's been super effective against us the last two games. You can point to (Pavol Demitra and Marian Gaborik), but you can make a case for him being as effective as either of those two. A lot of it is us being unaware of him being out on the ice because we don't have the smarts yet to get out of the way of his checks." …

From the good news/bad news file: Los Angeles Kings goaltender Dan Cloutier, recovering from in-season hip surgery, is skating again with the NHL team, the first step in possibly getting into a game or two before the season ends. In a year when new GM Dean Lombardi has made a series of smart, subtle moves to rebuild the team, trading for Cloutier — and then signing him to a generous two-year, $6.2-million contract extension just before the season started — represents his biggest mistake to date. Cloutier was terrible in his first 24 appearances for L.A. — a 6-14 mark, with a 3.98 GAA and a .860 save percentage. Among goaltenders who've received that much playing time, those are by the far the worst numbers in the league (the only one close is Hannu Toivonen of Boston, who has made 16 appearances, has a better save percentage (.870) but a worse GAA (4.42)). The Kings are thinking long-term thoughts, but any type of short-term success will hinge on getting more consistent goaltending than they've received this year. And if it doesn't come from Cloutier, then who is next year's starter? Aging Sean Burke? Mathieu Garon, who is unrestricted this season and has been just so-so whenever given the opportunity? Or do they reward Jason LaBarbera, who has had another excellent season in the minors but wasn't promoted to the main club after they ran into their injuries for fear that he'd be lost on re-entry waivers? You would think they owed LaBarbera the opportunity after what they put him through this season, but they may have something else in mind. There isn't a lot of free-agent goaltending talent on the market, but Minnesota's Nicklas Backstrom — the man responsible for them staying in the playoff race after Manny Fernandez was injured — could be available, as long as he doesn't sign an extension with the Wild before July. At 29, Backstrom doesn't qualify as an official NHL rookie, but he beat out Josh Harding for the back-up job in training camp; is No. 2 in the league in save percentage (.924) and No. 3 in GAA (2.17). For $750,000, Backstrom has been one of the NHL's best bargains this season …

More injury news: The Stars hope to get captain Brenden Morrow back for Saturday's game against Nashville. He's been out since Boxing Day, recovering from severed wrist tendons … The Flyers welcomed Mike Knuble back into the lineup the other night, after he missed 12 games recovering from a fractured right cheekbone and orbital bone, an injury that occurred in a collision with the Rangers' Brendan Shanahan. As for Shanahan, who suffered a concussion on the play and had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher, he is back skating again. With the Rangers hanging around the playoff race, Shanahan may return within the week.

AND FINALLY: The Sharks are back running on all cylinders again, although it might be unfair to read too much into their recent strong play. They've managed to beat up on Phoenix, Chicago and Edmonton in their last three games and have another trio of teams outside the playoff picture coming up on their schedule this week.

The most interesting question in San Jose is going to be, who starts in goal when the playoffs open? Last year, the Sharks rode Vesa Toskala down the stretch; he got them into the playoffs with a strong finish, before they eventually lost to the Oilers in the second round. The Sharks rotated Toskala and Evgeni Nabokov for most of the season, or until mid-February, when Toskala went down with a groin injury and Nabokov made 14 consecutive starts. Toskala is scheduled to return against Columbus, but you'd have to think that Nabokov's strong play in his absence will make him the playoff starter this season. It was Nabokov who carried San Jose to the conference final in 2004, when the Sharks lost to Calgary, the best playoff finish in their franchise history.

San Jose has been trying all year to figure out who gets to play on the Joe Thornton-Jonathan Cheechoo line and of late, it's been Milan Michalek who is getting the chance. Thornton, the defending NHL scoring champion, quietly moved up into third place this past week, one behind Tampa's Vince Lecavalier. He probably won't overtake the Penguins' Sidney Crosby (10 points ahead through Friday), although never say never. With 11 games to go last year, Thornton trailed Jaromir Jagr by seven points, but produced 19 points to finish the year with 125 and edged Jagr by two. A factor for Thornton: After playing through a series of injuries this season, he is finally healthy again.