(Ed. Note: There’s entirely too much sunshine in the summer. So your friends at Puck Daddy are offering a month of thrown shade and perpetual gloom. Behold, our Summer of Disappointment series, in which we ask fans of all 30 teams to recall the biggest bummer moments, teams and players in franchise history! Please wade into their misery like a freezing resort pool, and add your own choices in the comments!)

Written by Dan Saraceni of Lighthouse Hockey

Most Disappointing Team: 1993-94 New York Islanders

After a decade away from the Stanley Cup Final, the Islanders looked like a contending team again.

In 1992-93, a team of scrappy goofballs with a beloved coach overcame a gruesome injury to their star center to upend the defending Cup champions and make it all the way to the Prince of Wales Conference Final.



If that season was a fairy tale, 1993-94 was a direct-to-discount DVD torture porn movie.



The trouble started in the 1993 offseason, when Islanders GM Don Maloney gave up ace checking forward Tom Fitzgerald and goalie Glenn Healy in that year's expansion draft. Maloney also sent the team's other goalie, Mark Fitzpatrick, to Quebec for Ron Hextall, who was still despised by Islanders fans – and pretty much everyone else - from his days as a Philadelphia Flyer. The fans were never comfortable with Hextall and vice versa, and he went 27-26-6 in what would be his only season with the team.



They finished 36-36-12 and thanks to a bad, bad Atlantic Division, qualified for the playoffs. Where they were led like Long Island ducks to a slaughter.



The Islanders were utterly, hopelessly and traumatically destroyed by the Rangers in a sweep, surrendering six goals each game. The Islanders went home and the Rangers went... well, we don't need to talk about that. Salt in the wound: the back-up goalie for that Rangers team was none other than Glenn Healy.



If you look closely at an Islanders fan today even 20 years later, you can still see the scars from that season.





















Most Disappointing Islander: Alexei Yashin



View photos NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 14: Model/actress Carol Alt and hockey player Alexei Yashin attend the Lela Rose Fall 2010 Fashion Show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at The Salon at Bryant Park on February 14, 2010 in New York, New York. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for IMG) *** Local Caption *** Carol Alt;Alexei Yashin More

The Turtleneck Hall of Famer.



Here's a dirty little Islanders secret: Alexei Yashin was a pretty productive player for them. Seasons of 30, 26 and 28 goals and 0.84 points per game in his five seasons with the team isn't terrible.



Here's the problem: Two of the three players the Islanders gave up to the Ottawa Senators for Yashin were extraordinarily and comically productive above and beyond anything that Yashin accomplished as an Islander and long after he was bought out.



Lanky, penalty-prone freakshow defenseman Zdeno Chara blossomed into a All Star with Ottawa, and into a Norris Trophy mainstay, Stanley Cup captain and baby-eating boogieman with Boston. Jason Spezza, drafted with the Islanders' first-round pick in the trade, was good for a point per game across 11 seasons with the Senators despite some injury issues, a constantly shifting place in the line-up and annual attempts to run him out of town. His giggle is said to break glass in three counties.



That the Senators eventually lost both of them does little to ease the pain from all the forehead-slappping.



Yashin signed a 10-year, $80 million contract with the Islanders after being acquired in 2001. He was bought out in 2007 after a handful of first round playoff-losses, leadership questions and accruing enough baggage to fill MacArthur Airport. He'll finally come off the Islanders' books after this season.



















