Let me preface this by saying it would still surprise me if the Islanders had the stomach for a full rebuild.

This is still a team with a lot of veterans on long-term deals, including Mat Barzal, Bo Horvat and, crucially, Ilya Sorokin. There is still a relatively new arena and a desire to see it filled. And in addition to middling performance on the ice, one of the reasons for making a change at general manager was ownership’s desire to modernize its marketing apparatus — and it is hard to market a losing team.

None of that points toward the Islanders hiring a general manager who tells them during interviews that it will take three years to turn this team into a contender, and that stripping the team down to build it back up might be the way to go.

For a long time, though, that pathway has been largely — if not entirely — closed off. The Islanders had too few prospects, too few draft picks, too much money committed, too many no-trade clauses and too many long-term contracts to really consider a longer-term rebuild as a serious option. Nobody wants to be the Red Wings, who had to essentially add three years onto their rebuild just to extricate themselves from a terrible cap situation.