The Rangers won the first game of the finals in Montreal. For Game Two, Scotty Bowman was ready to start his backup goalie, Bunny Larocque, but in the warm-up Doug Risebrough hit Larocque right between the eyes with a shot, so Scotty started Ken Dryden instead. The Canadiens took the next four games.
The winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy that year really shows how important every player is. The playoff MVP was not a high-scoring forward, a star goalie, or a defenseman who logs thirty minutes a game. It was Bob Gainey, an incredibly hardworking defensive specialist. When his name was announced, his teammates hoisted him up on their shoulders and carried him around the ice. It would be hard to think of a better illustration of what he meant to that team.
• • •
At the start of the 1995–96 season, Serge Savard, who by that time had been the Canadiens’ GM for twelve years, was convinced they had a Cup-winning team.
Serge had been a great defenseman for the Canadiens. (Bobby Clarke has said that he was the toughest he’d ever played against.) Serge was bigger than a lot of players of his time and had a very long reach. He wasn’t so much a body checker, but there was no way around him. He had a terrific stick, always active, always in the way. Sometimes he looked clumsy, but he wasn’t. In fact, when people talk about the “Savardian spin-o-rama,” they often assume that it was invented by Denis Savard (and not unreasonably—Denis could stickhandle in a phone booth). But Habs announcer Danny Gallivan actually coined the phrase to describe something Serge, not Denis, had done. Serge learned it from watching Doug Harvey and made it his own. I saw him use it in the Summit Series, and it’s still a classic. Drew Doughty used it at the blue line against Russia at the 2010 Olympics.
But Serge didn’t play a lot of offense at the time because he and Larry Robinson were a tandem. Both huge guys. Larry was a great two-way defenseman—he took the puck up—while Serge was more defensive. Serge won eight Cups in his fifteen years with the Habs, which ended in 1981. He played two more seasons with the Winnipeg Jets before returning to the Canadiens as GM in 1983. The teams he managed won the Cup in 1986 and 1993.
Ten days before the 1995–96 season began, at the end of training camp, Serge told Canadiens president Ronald Corey that he thought he was maybe one player away from a winning team, and Corey agreed. But the Canadiens lost their first four games, and Serge wanted to make adjustments. So he called up Pierre Lacroix—Montreal goalie Patrick Roy’s former agent and now GM of the Colorado Avalanche—to discuss possible trades.
Lacroix wanted Roy, Savard wanted Owen Nolan. Savard mentioned he needed a goalie, and Stéphane Fiset’s name came up. It sounded like a trade was possible. They agreed to pick up the conversation again. And then suddenly Serge was fired.
After Corey delivered the bad news, Serge went back to his office to clean it out. His phone rang, his private line. It was Pierre Lacroix. Serge said, “Well, Pierre, I’ve just been fired, so I guess your next few calls have to be with somebody else.”
Réjean Houle took over as GM and Mario Tremblay replaced Jacques Demers as coach. It’s no secret that Mario and Patrick Roy didn’t get along. There’d been rumors about Patrick being traded for years. In 1993, the slogan “Trade Patrick” was seen on billboards all over town. There was even a newspaper poll showing that 57 percent of people wanted to trade him. That really bothered Patrick. He didn’t want to be traded, but two years later, with Mario Tremblay as his coach, he changed his mind.
Mike Vernon, who was playing for Detroit at the time, heard about it from Patrick himself. On the morning of December 2, 1995, the Wings were in Montreal getting ready for the game that night. Mike went to a little diner across from the old Forum. All the players went there. You’d walk in and go downstairs about five or six steps. There was a counter and a few tables. Patrick was at the counter. He and Mike had never said two words to each other, but when Patrick saw him he said, “Mikey, come over here. Sit down.”
Mike sat down and Patrick opened up. He said he was thinking of quitting hockey. What with all the negativity from the coach, the fans, and the media, he was really feeling the stress of playing in Montreal.
But Patrick was the most sought-after goaltender in the league. Mike told him he was too good to quit. He said, “You’re the best goalie in the league and we can’t lose a guy like you.” Mike said that he really loved playing in Detroit after the pressure cooker of playing as a hometown boy in Calgary. He added, “You’re too valuable to just quit. Just go get traded and you’ll have a lot more fun.”
That night at the Forum, Detroit beat the Canadiens 11–1. Tremblay left Roy in for the first nine goals—until the fans were booing every time he even touched the puck. Mike watched as Patrick finally came off the ice. At first he went to sit down, but then he stood up, went over to Corey, and told him that he was done with the team.
Mike showered and dressed in record time and left. He worried that Patrick might say something about their conversation that morning, and the last thing he wanted to do was talk to the media about what might have been going through Patrick’s mind. (It wasn’t until years later that Mike opened up about his conversation with Patrick, in an interview with Kelly Hrudey on Hockey Night in Canada Radio.)
Serge Savard had been watching that game, and the whole situation was hard for him. He felt that Mario Tremblay had made a major mistake. For Serge, Patrick was a player who’d worked so hard for the team and won so many games for them, and as a former player he knew that you never try to humiliate an athlete. You just don’t. Serge felt that when a goalie has a bad night—having let in, say, three goals—you just pull him and say, “Hey, you’ve done enough. Take a rest and we’ll start back the next game.” Serge felt that forcing Patrick to stay in the net that night was the spark that went on to destroy the team he’d built.
Patrick and Mario had been roommates back in 1985. When guys get into management, the main thing they have to remember is that we’re all human beings; the hockey element comes second. That’s why you appreciate guys like Cliff Fletcher—and there are a lot of other general managers out there who treat guys with respect.
I don’t know what was going through Mario Tremblay’s mind. I imagine he regrets it now, because it’s probably brought up a lot.
Four days after that game, on December 6, 1995, a deal was announced: Canadiens GM Réjean Houle had traded Patrick Roy and their captain, Mike Keane, to the Colorado Avalanche for wingers Andrei Kovalenko and Martin Rucinsky and goaltender Jocelyn Thibault.
Serge felt that they’d traded character away when Mike Keane left. And it’s true that the Stanley Cup seemed to follow Keane around. It was even more demoralizing for him when the team went on to bring back players Serge himself had traded. They traded for Stéphane Richer. Then they got Shayne Corson and Murray Baron from St. Louis for Pierre Turgeon, Craig Conroy, and Rory Fitzpatrick. Pierre was a heck of a scorer, one of the best in the league, and at the time of the trade Conroy was Montreal’s best player in the minors.
When he got to Colorado, Patrick was determined to stick his trade up Tremblay’s nose. He was a fiery, fiery competitor. He hated anyone scoring on him, even in practice. Joe Sakic has said that it made him a better shooter. Colorado had a really good team. They finished in first place in the Eastern Conference as the Quebec Nordiques the year before but lost in the first round to the Rangers. A loss like that really schools you. And then suddenly they had the best goalie in the game, so now they could play both ways—shut down the opposition and score.
With Roy in net, Colorado won the Stanley Cup in 1996, but it’s hard to win year in and year out. In the next four years, Colorado lost three conference finals, two of them in Game Seven. So they were close, especially in 2000, but they came up against Dallas, who were so deep. Dallas had Ed Belfour in goal—another guy who was very competitive. He never quit on anything. They had the offensive defensemen in Sydor and Zubov. They had Hatcher and Matvichuk,
really tough defensemen, and they had Nieuwendyk and Modano up the middle. Their coach, Ken Hitchcock, had them playing as a stingy team, whereas Colorado was more of a skating, offensive team.
But in the next year, 2001, Patrick Roy again made the difference in Colorado’s second Cup win. Montreal hasn’t won a Cup since they traded him.
Thirty-Two
HOCKEY ON THE ISLAND
One of the fun things about expansion and the arrival of the WHA back in the 60s and 70s was that truly no one knew how it would all come together. You had all these new players, new teams, new cities. It felt a little as though anything could happen.
But I would guess that no one predicted the kind of dominating success the New York Islanders had. The Islanders made the playoffs for fourteen straight years, winning four Stanley Cups and nineteen playoff series in a row. I’m not sure that record will ever be broken.
Along with the Atlanta Flames, the Islanders entered the NHL in 1972 as an expansion team—a defensive measure by the league to keep the WHA’s Raiders out of the New York market. The team moved into Long Island’s new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, built for the New York Nets. Meanwhile, the Raiders were forced into a difficult lease at Madison Square Garden and then left the city halfway through their second season. By 1974–75 they’d ended up in San Diego.
Bill Torrey, formerly of the California Seals, was the Islanders’ new general manager. Torrey knew what Sam Pollock had done with the Canadiens, and he wanted to do the same thing—build from the draft instead of trading for veterans. He told his owners that they’d never win with other teams’ castoffs.
Torrey was pretty sure they were going to end up in last place—and they did, with twelve wins, sixty losses, and six ties—but that meant getting first draft pick: Denis Potvin. He wasn’t tall by today’s standards, but he was 220 pounds. You don’t have to be a big guy to hit hard. It’s more technique than it is brute strength. Mike Peca was known as a devastating hitter, and he was not a big guy at all, maybe 180 pounds. Scott Stevens was maybe 200, and he put fear into guys’ hearts. Potvin was a wrecking ball. He could bring down anyone in the league, and he had the hands and heart to match.
Every single general manager in the league offered Torrey something to trade Denis. Emile Francis from the Rangers offered him multiple players, and so did Sam Pollock. But Torrey knew that the only way the Islanders had a chance was if they drafted well for several years. So he held on to his future star.
In their first year, the Islanders led the league with 347 goals scored against. So there was still work to be done.
• • •
At the end of their second season, the Islanders were second last, ahead of only the California Seals. Torrey looked for a new coach—although in 1973, there weren’t many who wanted to take on an expansion team, given how stingy the league had been in the way they’d distributed players to the two new franchises. The Islanders had about three players of NHL quality, and the rest of them were all minor leaguers. Still, Al Arbour agreed to take the job, and one of the reasons was that he could see the Islanders had put some pieces in place. Arbour knew a thing or two about creating success on an expansion team from his years in St. Louis. He would spend as much time teaching his young team as coaching.
The league made a change in the rules in 1974 because the WHA was signing all the best juniors. Halfway through the season the NHL board of governors decided that each team could draft one underage player between the ages of seventeen and twenty. Torrey’s western scouts wanted his first pick to be Bryan Trottier, an underage kid who played for the Swift Current Broncos. But Torrey had his eye on Clark Gillies, a high-scoring left-winger fresh from his Memorial Cup win with the Regina Pats.
No one used the phrase “power forward” back then—that came up around the time Cam Neely joined the Bruins. But if it had existed then, that’s what people would have called Gillies. Torrey called him “a grown man amongst boys.” He was 6’3½” and weighed 220 pounds, and when the occasion arose he could really handle himself. He intimidated guys.
Torrey’s luck held in 1974. Bryan Trottier was still available in the second round. Trottier was still in his first year of junior and playing on the third line. He wasn’t yet a star, so teams weren’t sure what they would be getting with him. In the end, anyone who let him slip by were kicking themselves very soon. Trottier became just a fabulous two-way player—exceptional defensively, great on faceoffs, and an excellent playmaker. He’d been mentored in Swift Current by Tiger Williams, and was so tough to play against. Bryan won the Calder as rookie of the year with a record 95 points in 1975–76. In 1978–79 he was the first player from a post–Original Six team to win the league scoring title, with 134 points. He also won the Hart as league MVP. Then, a year later, he won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP when the Islanders won the first of four consecutive Stanley Cups. He’d become the most successful First Nations player in NHL history.
The Islanders had picked up three future Hall of Famers—Potvin, Gillies, and Trottier—in just two amateur drafts. And when you include the 1972 expansion draft, Billy Smith was the fourth.
In their third season, 1974–75, the Islanders took their biggest step yet by making the playoffs. They won the first round, beating the Rangers eleven seconds into overtime in the deciding game. That year, the circus was at the Garden. Billy Harris thought that was lucky, and so he shoveled some elephant dung into a bag—and the team kept it with them throughout that series. When they came back to beat the Penguins after being down three games to none, their good luck charm seemed to be working, but they threw it away after they lost to the defending-champion Flyers in the semifinals. The Flyers went on to win their second Cup in a row. But a bit of playoff success gave the Islanders confidence. It was their first whiff of victory.
• • •
In the 1977 draft, Bill Torrey had the fifteenth pick and was looking at taking Mike Bossy. Bossy had played four years of major junior and averaged seventy-seven goals a year. No one had ever done that before, and no one’s done it since.
When Torrey talked to his Quebec scout, Henry Saraceno, who’d coached Mike as a bantam, he said, “Henry, there’s no way we can get him. Mike Bossy will be taken in the top eight or ten.” Fortunately for the Islanders, though, Mike was a right-winger—and there were a number of right-wingers up for the draft that year. Cleveland took Mike Crombeen, the Rangers picked Lucien DeBlois, Montreal got Mark Napier, Toronto got John Anderson, and Buffalo picked Ric Seiling. Torrey couldn’t believe his luck when he got Mike. Five right-wingers were taken before he was. Hard to believe, but it’s true.
Bossy would become the most dangerous forward in the league. He was able to disappear on the ice and get himself in the quiet areas where he could shoot the puck, a lot like Brett Hull. I played with him in the ’84 Canada Cup, where he lined up about ten pucks on Grant Fuhr. I was shocked at how many he scored on Grant. He never shot the puck high—a lot of Mike’s goals were in the bottom third of the net, twelve to fourteen inches off the ice above the pad. Billy Smith used to say, “Bossy’s shots hurt you when they hit you.” I’d seen Mike play in junior. I saw him play as a pro. He was one of the great, pure goal scorers. After Potvin and Trottier, Mike would become the third Calder Trophy winner as rookie of the year on the Islanders. He was the fifth Hall of Famer acquired by Torrey.
In that same 1977 draft, Torrey also managed to pick up John Tonelli, the thirty-third overall pick. A lot of teams didn’t want to touch him because he was in the WHA, but Torrey knew that he had only one more year to go on his contract and figured it was worth the gamble.
John Tonelli was one of those guys you didn’t like to play against. He was unpredictable. He had this high-energy approach to the game—his arms and legs would be going a hundred miles an hour all the time. In the corners or going to the net he was impossible to contain. And he was a very strong guy and tenacious on the puck. He
was a tank along the boards. I’m not sure Johnny has been given the recognition he deserves. He was an integral part of the Islanders’ success.
• • •
In the next two seasons, 1975–76 and 1976–77, the Islanders made it to the semis but ran into the Canadiens. Two years later, they swept Chicago in the quarters but then lost to the Rangers in the semis.
The Rangers were the Islanders’ number-one rival. No question. That had been the case right from the get-go, when Rangers fans from Long Island would buy tickets to the Coliseum because it was closer and tickets at the Garden had sold out. At the 1979 training camp the Islanders played the Rangers twice in exhibition—and each game took about six hours because there were so many brawls. During playoffs at Madison Square Garden, Billy Smith used to hide in the net during “The Star-Spangled Banner” because Ranger fans would buy fish in the nearby markets and throw them at him.
In 1979–80, Al Arbour decided he wouldn’t worry so much about regular-season standings. After four straight hundred-point seasons, the Islanders dropped to ninety-one points. But Torrey didn’t tear it all apart. He stuck with his players, his coach, and his plan. I think that’s the big secret. A lot of teams keep changing everything up, meaning that you can never get any traction.
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