We Want Fish Sticks

by Nicholas Hirshon

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  want to lose three pieces of the team’s future for a single superstar.33

  Running out of options, Maloney agreed to trade Lachance and Redden to Winnipeg for Keith Tkachuk, an all- star left wing who ranked among the NHL leaders with forty- one goals and forty assists in 1993– 94.

  Tkachuk, at twenty- three years old, might have formed a top line for years to come with Green, twenty- four, and Pálffy, twenty- three. The trade also made sense from a marketing standpoint. The majority of NHL players hailed from Canada or Europe, but Tkachuk was born in Massachusetts. His distinction as an American hockey star could help the Islanders sell fisherman jerseys to audiences on Long Island and perhaps throughout the country. Alas, he never arrived. The trade was contingent on the Islanders’ ability to sign Tkachuk, and Tkachuk’s agent did not return Maloney’s phone calls. Instead, the Islanders’

  would- be left wing of the future signed an offer sheet with Chicago, and Winnipeg matched.34

  Meanwhile, Milbury was solidifying himself as a media darling, often at the expense of the roster that Maloney assembled. The New York Times speculated that Milbury, the most high- profile face of the Islanders’ new brand, would “try to draw attention to a team in transition as it fights for visibility in a crowded sports marketplace.”35 Absent a star- laden roster, one way to generate headlines was through offbeat comments to reporters. In an age when most coaches spoke in dull, diplomatic tones, Milbury was authentic and unpredictable. He offered reporters these sorts of assessments of his players during training camp and the preseason:

  TODD BERTUZZI: His fuse may be slower to light than others, but he’s still got it.36

  DANTON COLE: If you put it all down on paper, he was more in the fifth- line category than the fourth- line category.37

  BRAD DALGARNO: The only thing that keeps Brad Dalgarno from being an outstanding player in this league is Brad Dalgarno.38

  ÉRIC FICHAUD: He seems like a fairly self- confident individual, as in cocky as hell. I don’t mind an edge of cockiness as long as it doesn’t spread over to arrogance.39

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  WADE REDDEN: If he can’t figure out that was the dumbest move he made all camp, then I can’t help him out. He could have been whistling, “Whistle While You Work,” there. He was mentally stagnant on that play.40

  ALEXANDER SEMAK: I haven’t seen him do a damn thing. I played

  [his] line until midway through the second period when I couldn’t take it anymore. He’s supposed to play like a North American in our zone and a European in the offensive zone. He’s got it backwards.41

  While Milbury’s act was entertaining and matched the no- nonsense image the Islanders were promoting, his unorthodox ways disaffected the players whose performance would dictate the success of the rebrand. The Islanders’ captain, Pat Flatley, called Milbury “intimidating.”42 In one of his first scrimmages as coach, he shoved Redden in the chest for not bodychecking. “It kind of shocked me a bit,” Redden said.43 At another point he played a psychological trick on forwards Marty McInnis and Yan Kaminsky by dressing them for a preseason game only to keep them in the locker room the whole night.44 When Milbury found out that the parents of a young player were coming to a game to watch their son, he would tell the player that he would not dress that night. “He would give them a practice jersey for the morning skate so the kid would think he wasn’t gonna play,” Mick Vukota remembered. “Just mind games with kids, young guys. I never thought it was necessary. In the end, it proved to be very unsuccessful.”45 Despite the negative impact on the players, there is no evidence that Islanders ownership ever told the coach to tone down his fiery rhetoric and strange motivational techniques, perhaps enjoying the media attention that Milbury was generating.

  Before the season even began Milbury fractured his relationships with the two players who gave the Islanders the best chance to stop pucks and score goals for years to come. Fichaud, the proclaimed goaltender of the future, was itching to prove his worth to his new coach.

  “If I work hard in practice and keep my focus on my game, I think I’ll have a pretty good chance to make the team,” Fichaud said. “I make my luck. If I work hard, I increase my chances.” Under the tutelage 91

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  of goaltending coach Bob Froese, Fichaud allowed only one goal in a game and a half in the preseason, showing a quick glove hand and confidence that initially endeared him to Milbury. In one game against the Panthers, Milbury contemplated taking Fichaud out early but the young goaltender held up three fingers, indicating that he wanted to play all three periods. Milbury kept him in, and he earned a thirty-two- save shutout and bolstered his case to make the roster. “There’s a job open,” Froese said. “There’s a jump ball. Let’s see who goes up and gets it.”46 Although Fichaud had done more than any other goalie in camp, Milbury cut him from the roster a few days later, saying he wanted to spare him from playing behind an injury- riddled defense corps. The decision was understandable, but the coach’s failure to reward Fichaud’s strong performance rattled him. “After my shutout, I thought maybe I had a chance to make the team,” he said.47

  Milbury also confronted the Islanders’ forward of the future, Žiggy Pálffy. After trading Pierre Turgeon and losing Ray Ferraro to free agency, the Islanders were counting on a breakout season from Pálffy, who scored twice in their opening victory the previous season and potted ten goals in thirty- three games. The laidback Pálffy spent the summer in his native Slovakia and vacationed in Spain, unreachable for six weeks. When he came to camp he could not complete the mandatory two- mile team run in under twelve minutes, nor could he run four miles in thirty minutes, as Milbury instructed. Pálffy saw little point in the exercises. “I don’t like to run,” he said. “I’d much rather be on the ice.”48 Milbury was livid. He told assistant coach Guy Charron to run Pálffy through a series of grueling drills. “I remember sometimes Mike said to me, ‘I want you to work Pálffy until he pukes,’” Charron recalled. “Well, I’m not that kind of a person. You can’t ask that of me. But I knew Mike was watching.” Charron thought that skating Pálffy to the point of vomiting was “stupid,” so he gave him breaks during practices. Veteran players such as Mick Vukota disliked how Milbury treated Pálffy, who was still acclimating to life in the United States. “Think about being a young player, especially a European player like Žigmund Pálffy, who’s left his home, learning the language, learning different diets, different foods, and then you 92

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  come and you got a guy riding you every day about your salary and you got no points last night,” Vukota said.49

  Despite Milbury’s concerns about his conditioning, Pálffy was thriv-ing in the preseason. He had a hat trick against Tampa Bay and scored on the power play and shorthanded against the Rangers. Still, a brawl in the Rangers game put the coach and player at odds again. Milbury came up in the gritty NHL of the late 1970s, when most players were Americans or Canadians who grew up practicing in confrontational drills. By the mid- 1990s an influx of Europeans such as Pálffy injected finesse into the league. “As we moved along in hockey and more Europeans came in our game, you needed someone that could adapt to what each and everyone’s strength was and use them to the best of their ability,” Charron said.50 Milbury was not the adapting type. When fights broke out in the Rangers game Pálffy and Alexander Semak stood to the side with their gloves on, watching while Wade Redden was being pummeled in a mismatch against one of the Rangers’ top enforcers. Milbury screamed futilely for Pálffy and Semak to stick up for Redden.51 On the Rangers television broadcast, announcer John Davidson scolded Pálffy and Semak, but he was more critical of the Islanders coach for putting two Europeans on the ice against the Rangers’ toughest players. As the camera lingered on Milbury, Davidson said, “There’s got to be some sense of responsibility right there. There just has to.”52

  While Milbury’s frustrati
on with Pálffy could be generously chalked up to generational and cultural differences, his mistreatment of the old- school Vukota was puzzling. Vukota, a right wing who led the Islanders in penalty minutes for four straight years, should have been Milbury’s type of player. Always down to defend his teammates and give the Islanders a spark, Vukota sparred with the most fearsome fighters of his generation, from Donald Brashear to Rob Ray. Unlike the malcontent Kirk Muller— and much of the rest of the league—

  Vukota was the rare veteran who wanted to play on Long Island even in the midst of a rebuild. “I would play for less money to be an Islander than I would to go anywhere else,” Vukota said. “I just loved Long Island, and that was part of me drinking the Kool- Aid. I believed in 93

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  it. I believed that we were gonna win at some point, and I wanted to be there to do that.”53

  For no apparent reason Milbury decided to test Vukota’s allegiance.

  Before a preseason game against Tampa Bay, Milbury told Vukota that he would dress only for warm- ups, so Vukota stayed at Nassau Coliseum, skipped his usual afternoon nap, and ate pizza instead of loading up on protein and carbs. As warm- ups began Milbury revealed that Vukota would actually dress for the game, but assured that he would just sit on the bench. Then, in the second shift of the game, Milbury dispatched the unsuspecting Vukota onto the ice. Unfazed, Vukota went out and fought Lightning heavyweight Rudy Poeschek, served his five minutes in the penalty box, and returned to the bench.

  Then Milbury sent out Vukota for a second shift, and he fought Brantt Myhres, who was two inches taller. The two scraps left him exhausted.

  “I’ve never been that dehydrated. Holy shit,” Vukota remembered.

  His performance, though, made Milbury radiant. “Kid, you got some balls,” the coach told Vukota. “You got one more in you for me?” Vukota was stunned that Milbury had invoked himself rather than the other players. He shot back to the coach, “I have one more for the boys.”

  Milbury smirked, walked away, and benched Vukota for the rest of the night. Their relationship was irretrievably damaged. “It was, for me, a slow transition to self- destruction,” Vukota said. “I never had played for a coach, meaning Mike, that wanted you to play for him.”54

  In the final days before the season, Maloney made two moves to improve the Islanders’ underwhelming forward corps. First, Maloney used the waiver draft to claim veteran checking center Bob Sweeney from Buffalo. The Sabres lost confidence in Sweeney after he underwent off- season surgery on a torn rotator cuff, but he had scored as many as twenty- two goals in a season, was strong on penalty kills and face- offs, and had experience playing under Milbury for two seasons in Boston.55 The next day Maloney pulled off one of the most significant trades of his tenure, a three- way deal with the Devils and Avalanche that sent disgruntled center Steve Thomas to New Jersey and Colorado’s holdout left wing Wendel Clark to Long Island. Clark, a former Maple Leafs captain with 220 career goals and a reputation for hard 94

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  hits, was by far the Islanders’ biggest off- season acquisition. He had exceeded the thirty- goal mark three times in his career, including a career- high forty- six with Toronto in 1993– 94. The Islanders hoped that Clark would become a team leader and a mentor for young, gritty forwards like Brett Lindros, and Maloney promptly signed him to a three- year deal, insisting that he transformed the Islanders “from playoff pretenders to playoff contenders.”56

  Adding former all- stars like Muller and Clark in the span of a few months enthused the role players on the Islanders’ roster. “It was exciting to play with them,” said defenseman Milan Tichy. “It was something special because I was playing with very good stars over there.” Cole, who spent much of the season in the minors, appreciated Clark going out of his way to include him in team outings. “That’s why everybody who played with him really liked him.” Although Clark was only five- foot- eleven and weighed 194 pounds, he played with power and enthusiasm that impressed Milbury. When Clark arrived in Islanders camp a reporter asked the coach if his newest winger would play in the season opener a few days away. “Unless he’s crippled, he’s playing,” Milbury responded. Clark laughed when he heard the promise. “I guess I’ll be playing Saturday then.” Milbury put Clark on the Islanders’ top line with Muller and Lindros.57

  The media was more skeptical about Maloney’s only major trade of the summer. Clark was about to turn twenty- nine and had missed 276 games over ten seasons to suspensions and injuries to his hands, feet, knees, ribs, and back. Newsday called the signing “a $6- million dice- throw on an injury- prone player.” Clark’s passion for the game was indisputable, but he was too banged and bruised to make the sort of impact the Islanders expected. A few seasons prior the Maple Leafs coach criticized Clark for taking a Caribbean vacation while he was injured over the All- Star Break, and opposing players mocked him as

  “Wendy” for passing up chances to fight their enforcers.58 By 1995 Clark was no longer a player to build around. Neither was Muller or Sweeney.

  “It was more players that could have been more complementary on a real good team,” said assistant coach Guy Charron. “And now all of a sudden we bring these guys into a situation that we know success 95

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  won’t be turned around by just acquiring these guys.” Clark said he was happy to be traded, but jumping from perennial contenders in Toronto and Quebec to a cellar dweller on Long Island had to be demoralizing.

  “The veterans didn’t really want to be there because the team was so bad,” said Eric Mirlis, the assistant director of media relations. “A guy like Wendel Clark was so out of place on that team.”59

  As hockey reporters began filing their season previews, a general consensus emerged that Maloney had not done enough to ensure a positive season. Sports Illustrated predicted the team would finish tenth in the conference. The St. Louis Post- Dispatch said the Islanders had

  “a decent defense and a few useful forwards, but not nearly enough of anything else.” Newsday called them “a bottom- third- of- the- league club that can aspire to win about 30 games and should miss the playoffs for the fourth time in six seasons.” Even the normally measured New York Times predicted that Milbury would become so frustrated by the lack of talent on the roster that he “might explode by Halloween.”60

  Successful rebranding depended largely on winning, and Maloney’s failure to build a contender— due in large part to the tight fists of ownership— would doom the fisherman jerseys.

  The Islanders’ front office ignored the media chatter. All teams play up their prospects to build excitement and sell tickets, but the Islanders raised expectations so high above what the hockey media had predicted that fans would either tune them out or buy in and be disappointed.

  Incredibly, the first Islanders program of the season called the team

  “one of the strongest in the league.” Their playoffs chances were “very real.” Milbury brought “instant credibility.” Clark was “everything they have been looking for.” The program even suggested that Maloney had built a team capable of winning a string of championships:

  “There is an obvious commitment to the current and future success of the franchise so that perhaps one day, this season will be remembered as the rebirth of the New York Islanders. Or the beginning of a new dynasty.”61 By overselling themselves, the Islanders had almost guaranteed a letdown for the fan base.

  For the players the rebranding effort was cause for optimism. If the Islanders lost, young players stood to receive more ice time and cement 96

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  themselves as regulars in the world’s greatest hockey league. If they won, success would be its own reward, and they would be credited with outperforming the media’s low expectations. “You’re optimistic all the time whenever you start the season,” said Travis Green, who was heading into his fourth NHL campaign. “You’re anxious. You’re lo
oking for new opportunity.” Twenty- four- year- old Niklas Andersson, whose NHL experience amounted to just three games with the Quebec Nordiques in 1992– 93, was hoping to stick on Long Island.

  “I was actually just focusing on doing my part at that time and didn’t really know and think about winning games that much. I just thought about playing my best hockey, but we for sure had some talent on the team that I thought we had a chance to win games.” Even Darius Kasparaitis, still an unsigned free agent on the eve of the season, was eager to rebound from tearing the ACL in his right knee eight months prior. “I felt like we’re shifting towards [a] different direction,” he said.

  “We were rebuilding. We had a lot of good first- round draft choices and we had a lot of young talent.”62

  If the players needed further inspiration from their doubters, they could look to the pages of the Daily News. The same newspaper that mocked the Islanders’ new jerseys with “sea sick” and “gone fishin’”

  headlines in April continued its maritime mockery in October. One headline read, “Championship Hopes? For the Isles, None Atoll.” The accompanying article contended that the Islanders had “a not- ready-for- prime- time cast that will challenge for a playoff spot and earn respect, but will ultimately fall short.”63 Even that dim prediction turned out to be too generous.

  After months of controversy surrounding the rebrand, the Islanders opened their first season in the fisherman jerseys in a Saturday-afternoon game against the Bruins in Boston on October 7, 1995. The media had an embarrassment of subplots to choose from. In his first game as Islanders coach, Mike Milbury was returning to the city where he was a defenseman for fourteen years, coach for two, and assistant general manager for two more.64 The Bruins were christening their new arena, the FleetCenter, after almost seven decades at the fabled 97