Gillies still resents the way Tavares left Islanders

Former New York Islanders captain Clark Gillies doesn't think leading Toronto Maple Leafs goal-scorer John Tavares was sincere about his intentions with his old team.

Ahead of Tavares' second game back in Long Island, Gillies joined Sportsnet 590 The FAN on Monday and explained he's still troubled by the way that Tavares left the Islanders for his hometown Maple Leafs as a free agent in 2018.

"If he would have been up-front and honest with the team and said, 'Look, I'm not sure. Get what you can for me. If I change my mind, I want to come back to the Islanders, I'll re-sign again next summer,' the Islanders then would have probably gotten a first, maybe a first and a second-round draft pick for him," Gillies said.

"He could have gone on his merry way. Ten years of great service to the Islanders, 'I want to go back home to Toronto,' I think everybody here would have been very happy with that. But it's just the way the whole thing went down that's got everybody in an uproar, and me included."

Although the Islanders have clinched a playoff spot and are enjoying one of their most successful seasons in several decades, Gillies also blamed Tavares for setting the franchise back in its pursuit of the Stanley Cup.

"The last thing on my bucket list is to drink out of the Stanley Cup again," Gillies said, "and in my opinion, John kinda put us back a couple of steps by not doing the right thing last summer, so yeah, I'm a little upset about that."

Gillies was a part of the "Trio Grande" line with Mike Bossy and Bryan Trottier from the late 1970s through the early 1980s. He won four consecutive Stanley Cups with the Islanders from 1980-83 and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002.