Declaring your team's most important player is not a simple thing. It's not always the most valuable guy or the highest points producer. It is the player who makes your team go; the one you can't afford to lose, even if all he contributes can't be measured by fancy stats.

Most Important Player: John Tavares, Forward

OK, this might have been the easiest of all the Most Important Player selections we’ve come across this summer. A finalist for the Hart Trophy this past season, the second time he has been on the final ballot for the league’s MVP award, Tavares has come into his own as one of the game’s elite players in the past couple of seasons.

The former No. 1 pick in the 2009 draft finished with 86 points last season, narrowly missing out on what would have been his first Art Ross Trophy as the league’s top point-producer as Dallas Stars winger Jamie Benn surged on the final night of the season to win the award with 87 points. Nonetheless, Tavares’ 38 goals, 13 power-play goals and 86 points were career highs and led the Islanders in each category.

One wonders if his totals might have been even higher had Kyle Okposo, his traditional winger, not been injured and missed a quarter of the season, leading head coach Jack Capuano to use Tavares with Josh Bailey and Anders Lee for much of the season. Also, Tavares’s 31 power-play points were fifth in the league. And for the fourth time in his career, Tavares played in all 82 regular-season games, reinforcing his status as not just one of the game’s top centers but one of the most durable as well.

Now the question is whether Tavares has that special "it" quality that will help catapult his teammates to greatness. We saw some of that in the first round of the playoffs when Tavares scored just 15 seconds into overtime in Game 3 against the Washington Capitals. The victory gave the Islanders a 2-1 series lead but it was the last lead they enjoyed, ultimately falling in seven games in a bitterly contested series. Tavares was a force, though, collecting six points in seven games and overall he has 11 playoff points in 13 games.

At just 24 years of age, the hockey world is basically Tavares’ oyster, and he can expect to play a pivotal role for Canada in next fall’s World Cup of Hockey. That said, the pressure will only mount on the Islander captain to lead his team not just to the postseason but to guide them back to a Promised Land almost forgotten by an Islanders team headed into new digs in Brooklyn this season.