When I started following hockey as a young kid around the age seven or eight, the Islanders were the best team in the league. (Interestingly, I clearly remember friends who cheered for Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Philadephia but no one else seemed to have latched on to the Islanders which is another reason I liked them as they were “my” team.)
Their amazing dynasty won four Stanley Cups in a row from 1980-1983 and featured one of the most competitive, money goalies of all-time in Billy Smith, one of the best pure goal scorers of all-time in Mike Bossy, not one but two outstanding Saskatchewan players in Bryan Trottier (one of the most well-rounded players in the game at the time) and Clark Gillies (who was one of the toughest players in the league but still had top line level skills), one of the greatest defensemen of all-time in Denis Potvin and a strong supporting cast of role players from Bob Nystrom to John Tonelli to Butch Goring to Ken Morrow and more, all under the guidance of one of the game’s great coaches, Al Arbour.
In comparison to their glory years, the Islanders went through one of the worst stretches in professional hockey through most of the 90s where they were simply awful and missed the playoffs completely in 1990, 1991 and then consecutively from 1994 to 2000– in essence they were not a playoff quality team for most of the 1990s.
Between that terrible stretch plus the fact that we moved to Calgary in 2001, I became a Flames fan. But the Isles always had a spot in my heart and are still who I consider my second favourite team though I don’t follow them nearly as closely as I used to.
So, especially with the Flames not even making the playoffs this year, it was great to see the Islanders beat Boston tonight to advance to the Final Four of this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs. Who knows? Maybe they’ll win the Cup and make me feel like a kid again! 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yh89aftLtw
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