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Look out Brooklyn, here comes Joshua Ho-Sang.

With several National Hockey League teams reluctant to pull the trigger and use a first-round draft pick to take the flashy, high-scoring Windsor Spitfires forward, the New York Islanders eagerly snapped up the 18-year-old Ho-Sang Friday night with the 28th pick in the 2014 NHL Draft. In fact, the Islanders made a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning to get back into the first round to get Ho-Sang.

Joshua Ho-Sang (left) was taken by the New York Islanders, the 28th player picked in the 2014 NHL Draft.

Joshua Ho-Sang (left) was taken by the New York Islanders, the 28th player picked in the 2014 NHL Draft.

A relieved-looking Ho-Sang walked onto the stage inside Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, pulled on an Islanders jersey and happily tugged on a team cap.

“It’s just such an opportunity and a moment I’ll cherish forever,” he told TSN.

Many general managers were down on Ho-Sang, despite the 32 goals and 52 assists in 67 games for the Ontario Hockey League Spitfires last season. They viewed Ho-Sang as an individualistic, one-dimensional offensive machine who’s more of an electrifying highlight reel entertainer than a hockey player. They were concerned that he could not – or would not – conform his game to fit their teams.

Some comments he made in pre-draft interviews this week also didn’t endear him some in the hockey establishment. Some NHL team were quoted as saying Ho-Sang was on their Do Not Draft lists.

“All I was saying was that I truly believe in myself and I think if you ask any player in the draft, they do, too,” Ho-Sang said.

The Islanders weren’t scared off. General Manager Garth Snow said Ho-Sang will “fit right in” with the Isles and joked later in a television interview that “They(critics)  sh** on me, too.”
“They can’t s*** on me any more than they do, I think is what I said,” Snow later told The New York Daily News. “I don’t care. We get players that we feel can help us win a championship, and we don’t give a s*** what anyone else thinks – except our fans, or course.”
So the son of a Jamaican father of Chinese descent and a Jewish Chilean mother with Russian and Swedish bloodlines now hopes to take his talents to New York. Ho-Sang isn’t NHL-ready yet. But he could be by the 2015-16 season when the Islanders move from Long Island’s Nassau County Coliseum – one of the NHL’s oldest arenas – to multi-ethnic, multicultural Brooklyn and the Barclays Center.