The Islanders are the kings of comedy

	The Isles' frosty new GM must replace himself while his salary counts against the team's cap for the next two years. Al Bello/Getty Images

There's a talented comedy team in New York. They're called the Islanders. Anyone who saw their stage show on Tuesday could tell that their timing needs a lot of work, but their material is hilarious.

Clearly inspired by Jose Canseco's resurrection as a pitcher in the Golden Baseball League's All-Star Game on Tuesday, the Islanders promoted their backup goalie to general manager. Hopefully, new GM Garth Snow will perform better than Canseco, who gave up four runs and retired only one batter but still had a better day than Neil Smith.

Smith, quite frankly, deserved to be voted off the Island. Despite a flurry of player acquisitions, he failed to bring the Stanley Cup back to Long Island during his 40 days as GM. In fact, the Islanders haven't even made the playoffs since he was hired way back in the beginning of June. Plus, Smith didn't have nearly as many saves last season as Snow. On the bright side, though, Smith was just tapped by CBS to star in The New Adventures of Old GM.

It's easy for us to sit here and laugh. Very easy. But maybe owner Charles Wang will actually turn out to be right for once. With the Islanders' track record of comical failures, though, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But Snow doesn't have time for jokes. He's got a job to do. The first order of business: hire a new backup goalie. The scrub they had last year went 4-13-1 behind starter Rick DiPietro. Snow's task is made more difficult by the fact that the $750,000 annual salary he would have earned as a player if he hadn't retired to take the GM job will clog his team's cap for the next two years. But Snow is still the luckiest guy in hockey.

Why? Well, even if he turns out to be the worst GM in NHL history, Snow can't do the Islanders much harm. You can't ruin a team that finished 12th in a 15-team conference and still owes Alexei Yashin an amount of money roughly equivalent to the GNP of his native Russia. You can't really embarrass a franchise that had its locker room flooded with raw sewage when a pipe burst in Nassau Coliseum in March.