For Maloney the devolution of the Muller trade proved ruinous.
Once other teams realized how badly the Islanders wanted to unload Muller, they were unlikely to offer players of comparable value in a trade. Maloney suggested that he could ship out Muller before Thanksgiving, but he could not close a deal with any of the several teams rumored to be interested.51 Muller, the most notable acquisition of Maloney’s tenure, relaxed in sunny California and continued to collect his full salary while his team struggled to compensate for the scoring he was supposed to provide.52 The lack of a first- line center crippled the Islanders. “It’s tough,” Derek King admitted. “You look around and every team has that kind of player.”53
At the same time, Maloney’s most significant import of the off- season was proving to be a bust behind the bench. Reporters referred to Milbury as “Captain Queeg,” the eccentric commander in the novel The Caine Mutiny. Due in part to Milbury’s reputation, some players made clear they would rather stick with the Islanders’ minor league affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on the verge of winning back- to- back International Hockey League championships, than be promoted to the big club.
“We actually said when we got sent down, you’re getting called up, and when you get called up, you’re getting sent down,” remembered center Chris Taylor, who bounced between Utah and Long Island frequently. Maloney was the highest- ranking executive of an organization that had become a laughingstock on and off the ice. When the Colorado Avalanche visited Nassau Coliseum the Denver Post called the fisherman jerseys “the joke of the league,” describing the logo as
“a crazed- looking ‘Islander’ who looks more like the Gorton’s fisherman after eating too many of his own fish sticks.” Had Maloney built 122
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a winning roster, the uniforms might not have mattered, but the piling losses under his watch doomed the rebrand. On many nights the half-empty Nassau Coliseum resounded with chants of “Don must go!”54
On December 2 the fans got their wish. During a long- distance phone call, Ralph Palleschi, the Islanders’ chief operating officer, told Maloney that he had been fired. “He failed,” Palleschi told reporters.55 Maloney took responsibility for the team’s poor play. “At some point in time, enough is enough. The bottom line is the job didn’t get done.” Maloney also understood that his failure to ice a winning team affected the fledgling brand. “The idea is to be competitive and entertaining,” he said, “and we weren’t.” The Islanders had paid for Maloney’s inexperience. Since becoming the NHL’s youngest general manager at age thirty- three in 1992, he had handed an overgenerous contract to an unproven Brett Lindros on the foolhardy notion that he would be as dynamic as his superstar brother and engineered unsuccessful trades for Muller, Wendel Clark, and Tommy Söderström. In fairness, though, Maloney had also been hamstrung by a cash- strapped ownership that could not afford to green- light pay increases for Ray Ferraro and Steve Thomas or dish out lucrative free- agent contracts. The same small- market money troubles that drove the Islanders to unveil new jerseys paralyzed them from acquiring the star power necessary for a successful rebrand. “Money is such a factor,” Maloney acknowledged.
“We’re not working with unlimited resources.”56 In retrospect, it was hard to dissociate the general manager from the logo controversy. As one fan said, “To me, the logo thing was done to try to make fans forget how the team, under Maloney, has been allowed to fall apart.”57 The Islanders promised to conduct a thorough but expeditious search for Maloney’s replacement, appointing former coach Al Arbour to lead the selection process.58
On the day Maloney’s firing was announced, Islanders ownership identified Milbury as a possible successor. His inclusion on the short list was surprising. Although Milbury was an assistant general manager with the Bruins and aspired to control player personnel someday, he coached the Islanders to a last- place record that had just gotten 123
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Maloney fired. Among the more qualified options were Maloney’s assistant Darcy Regier, a former Islanders defenseman who was credited with designing a computerized system for scouting and drafting, and former Winnipeg Jets general manager Mike Smith, who presided over several winning seasons in Manitoba and expressed interest in coming to Long Island.59 Alternately, the Islanders, under criticism for abandoning their original logo, could have embraced their heritage and appeased their alumni by hiring Hall of Fame defenseman Denis Potvin, who was lobbying for the job.60
Two months into the season Milbury’s erratic behavior was hard to ignore. As the general manager search got under way he compared the banished Muller to three other NHL players who voiced problems with the management of their clubs. “Every team’s got it these days,”
he said. “The inmates are officially running the asylum.”61 Suggesting that one of his players was mentally ill did not eliminate Milbury from consideration for the franchise’s most high- profile job. In fact, the media presented him as the most obvious candidate.
Only ten days after Maloney’s firing the Islanders added the GM
duties to Milbury’s plate. “At the end of the day, we strongly believed, with the support that he has in this organization through Darcy and Al and others, Mike would help us make the progress we hadn’t made in the past,” said Islanders cochairman Robert Rosenthal. As with most Islanders moves, the team probably chose Milbury because he was the most cost- effective hire, so eager to control player personnel that he agreed to take on added duties even though he would not receive a raise on top of his five- year coaching contract. Rosenthal assured fans that Milbury would have a “flexible” budget, but in truth the Islanders had no clearer path to resurgence than when Maloney was in charge. In one headline Islander Insider raged, “Don Maloney’s Firing Solves Nothing! The Organization from Top to Bottom Doesn’t Have a Clue!” A franchise that won four straight titles the previous decade seemed content just to escape the NHL cellar in the 1990s. “If I said we were going to win the Stanley Cup in three years, that would be a load of bull,” Milbury said. “We have to get better, and the sooner the better.”62 In his first major move Milbury hired former Bruins and 124
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Senators coach Rick Bowness to join his staff as an assistant, providing the team with an experienced replacement behind the bench to fill in when Milbury’s new role required him to travel.63
In the short term Milbury’s new responsibilities had little effect on the on- ice product. The Islanders ended the calendar year last in the seven- team Atlantic Division at 9- 22- 6, thirty- two points behind the first- place Rangers. It was the third- worst record in the league.
They also led the league with twelve losses within their division. The roster that Maloney assembled had scored only 105 goals, coming in at twentieth in the twenty- six- team NHL, and allowed 141 goals, the fifth most.64 There were still three and a half months left in the regular season, but the Islanders’ hopes for a playoff berth were dead.
The Islanders bridged 1995 and 1996 with their best games of the season. During a three- week stretch from December 21 to January 15, the team went 5- 1- 4, picking up fourteen of a possible twenty points. Lessening the embarrassment of the Kirk Muller trade, Mathieu Schneider, who was acquired in the same deal, had acclimated to life on Long Island, contributing regularly on offense and defense and buying a home for his family in Huntington Bay. “We love it,”
he said, offering a refreshing change of pace from the Islanders’
disgruntled veterans. “It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s beautiful.”65 Schneider was an established player who spoke openly about wanting to sign long term with the Islanders, making him a perfect candidate to become the face of the rebrand. He ranked third on the team with twenty- nine points, filled in as captain in games when Pat Flatley did not dress, and was selected for his first NHL All- Star Game, notching an assist for the victorious Eastern Conference.66
(The Islanders’ only other all
- star representative was Nyisles, who worked the crowd in Boston with other mascots.)67 In the Islanders’
last contest of January, Schneider scored in overtime against fellow all- star Dominik Hašek to defeat the Sabres in the thrilling conclusion of a game that marked the NHL debut of supposed goaltender of the future Éric Fichaud.68 As the cameras scanned the raucous crowd at Nassau Coliseum, a teenage fan in a fisherman jersey was spotted clapping wildly against the blare of the foghorn- like goal horn.69 It 125
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was a brief glimpse of how the rebrand might have been received if the Islanders won more often.
Another feel- good moment involved the call- up of twenty- five- year-old defenseman Jason Herter from the minors. Drafted eighth overall by Vancouver in 1989, Herter had yet to skate in the NHL in the six years since his selection, making him the highest- drafted player in NHL
history to never play in the league. His first action as an NHL player was participating in warm- ups before a game against the Penguins at Nassau Coliseum, with Mario Lemieux in the opposite end.70 “What I remember is skating off the ice after warm- up and some guy yelling out, ‘You look great, Herter. Hope you stick.’ That was it. I thought, Well, that was nice of him.” Herter did not play versus Pittsburgh, but he traveled with the Islanders to Hartford and finally made his NHL debut the next night against the Whalers. Paired with Schneider, Herter was on the ice for three Islanders goals and got an assist on one of them. The New York Times called him “a bright spot, one of the only ones on defense for the Islanders.” While some regular players mocked the fisherman jersey, Herter was proud to wear any NHL uniform with his nameplate on the back. He was sent back down to the minors and would never skate again in the NHL. “For that one day or the two days I was up, that was outstanding,” he said. “I felt I played well and my dad saw me play on TV. There’s a lot of things to be proud of.”71
Around the same time as Herter’s debut the Islanders scored a rare public relations coup when photographs of the fisherman jerseys appeared in two major fashion magazines. In Mademoiselle a two- page photo spread of NHL players involved in their communities showed Schneider, clad in his fisherman uniform, reclining on a bench alongside Ottawa’s Alexandre Daigle, Dallas’s Mike Modano, and Boston’s Cam Neely. In another shoot for Cosmopolitan, a female model draped her arm around the Capitals’ Joe Juneau and the Islanders’ Scott Lachance. Gleeful over the mainstream coverage, Islanders programs reported the jersey was “in fine fashion.”72
The Islanders brand took another step forward in January when Milbury finally found a taker for Kirk Muller, ending a nine- month saga involving probably the most talented yet most despised player 126
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to put on a fisherman sweater. In a three- team trade with Toronto and Ottawa, the Islanders sent Muller to the Maple Leafs and defense prospect Wade Redden to the Senators in exchange for defenseman Bryan Berard, who had been selected first overall in the 1995 draft, as well as center Martin Straka and enforcer Ken Belanger. The key to the deal was Berard, the first player in the history of the Ontario Hockey League to win rookie of the year and defenseman of the year honors in the same season. A steady blueliner who liked to join the rush, Berard had nineteen goals and thirty- five assists in just thirty- seven games in juniors.73 The day after the trade, the famously hasty New York media was already comparing the eighteen- year- old to future Hall of Famers Chris Chelios and Brian Leetch.74 The Islanders, burned before when they overhyped young players, had reason to be more cautious in promoting Berard. Only a few weeks earlier Brett Lindros, whom the team once billed as its scorer of the future, ended his season after sustaining his third concussion in nine months.75 Lindros would never play another game in the NHL. What should have been a learning experience for the Islanders, however, did not affect their hyperbole about Berard. “We think he has the upside of a superstar nature,” Milbury told the press.76 Bowness was just as enthusiastic. “With the offensive skills and the fire with which he plays the game, he should become a franchise player.”77 The Blade ran a cover photograph of Berard, who was born in Rhode Island, next to the headline “American Dream.”78
Belanger, a rookie who had spent most of the season playing for the Maple Leafs’ minor league affiliate in Newfoundland, knew nothing about the jersey controversy until he played his first home game at Nassau Coliseum on January 30. By then Islanders fans had amended the “We want fish sticks!” chant to more accurately convey their opinion of the uniforms. “I could hear the crowd chanting something,”
Belanger remembered. “I couldn’t make out what they were chanting, so I asked a guy. I don’t remember if it was Berard or Lachance. I said, ‘What are they saying?’ The crowd was chanting, ‘No more fish sticks!’ I go, ‘What the hell are “No more fish sticks!”?’ He goes, ‘Our logo. It’s a fisherman.’ That was my first experience with the logo.” At six- foot- four and 225 pounds, Belanger had compiled a whopping 222
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penalty minutes in just thirty games in the minors, and he realized his role was to bring a measure of toughness and respect to a team with a flagging brand. Similar to his new teammates, Belanger disliked almost every aspect of the new uniform. “There’s nothing that I would want to go buy that jersey on a shelf in a sporting- goods store,” he quipped,
“other than my name on the back of it.”79
Although Muller’s departure rid the team of its biggest distraction, the results on the ice remained mediocre. The trade came amid a stretch in January and February during which the Islanders dropped ten of thirteen games, including a five- game losing streak. On February 8 the Islanders fell 6– 2 to the Rangers, their fourth loss to their rivals in four games, while “We want fish sticks!” echoed through Madison Square Garden. As further embarrassment for the Islanders brand, Milbury was so irate over late- game taunting by the Rangers’ Ulf Samuelsson that he spit at the defenseman when he made a second pass by the Islanders bench. Samuelsson, who had a reputation as one of the dirtiest players in the league, relished the chance to school the uncouth Islanders coach on manners. “Right now I’m trying to teach my two kids not to spit at each other at home,” he said. “It’s going to be tough now that they saw it on TV.”80 Even though several Rangers players witnessed the incident, Milbury denied spitting, calling the accusation
“ridiculous” and “ludicrous” and claiming he was “really offended.”81
Newsday dubbed the minor scandal “Watery Gate.”82 Decades later, Milbury, returning to his role as a hockey analyst, admitted on air that he had indeed spit at Samuelsson. “I did spit at Ulf Samuelsson, at least in his direction. I lost all sorts of respect for him when he told the press about it afterwards. It was just a gesture.” His broadcast colleagues looked incredulous that Milbury would claim to have lost respect for a player who was the target of the coach’s own saliva.83 The quote epitomized Milbury’s odd perspective on appropriate behavior in hockey.
With five minutes remaining in the Rangers game, the jerseys again became a target for derision when a fan tossed a fish on the ice. “We’ll definitely remember that the next time we come in,” Schneider told the New York Times. Asked years later to elaborate, Schneider said,
“Those are things that as a professional athlete you store it in your 128
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memory bank, and you try to use it as motivation when you’re playing, whether it’s a fan or something that a player says in the paper or on the ice. It becomes motivation. For us, that rivalry was huge.” The games were just as intense for Islanders fans, who had to endure constant ribbing in the stands over the fisherman logo. Belanger sympathized.
“You could see how people would be upset about it, because now that logo’s representing— it’s making a joke of all the people of Long Island, right?”84
Incensed over the state of the franchise, the men behind the Islander Insider founded the Save the Islan
ders Coalition, known as STIC, with the primary goal of pressuring ownership to restore the original logo and sell the team. Leading the coalition were the newsletter’s editor, Art Feeney, and Tom Croke, a computer consultant from Huntington. At its apex STIC had about four hundred members who attended weekly meetings, many of which included heated rhetoric about the new jerseys. “I won’t say everyone, but a lot of the fans were embarrassed to wear it,” Croke said. “The biggest complaint was, ‘What was wrong with the original uniform? There’s nothing wrong with it.’” To the chagrin of Islanders management, Islander Insider became a powerful mouthpiece of outrage against the logo. At one point the newsletter offered a twenty- seven- dollar deal for an annual subscription and a hat with the original logo. Citing sources, the Insider reported that a sporting- goods store in Westbury had sold only one fisherman jersey and was considering removing all new Islanders merchandise from its shelves.85 The newsletter criticized Nyisles for dancing through the national anthem and blocking the views of spectators, and it openly wondered whether a new policy prohibiting fans from bringing banners into Nassau Coliseum was adopted to minimize criticism of the uniforms. It documented negative media coverage of the rebrand, including ESPN anchors reporting scores with wording such as “Kings 9, Fish Sticks 2.”86 Not content to grumble among themselves, the members of STIC even coordinated letter- writing campaigns to ownership, met with local politicians, and organized rallies to protest the jerseys.
The Islanders were clearly frustrated over STIC criticizing their new brand. When Croke appeared on a sports radio program in January, Pat 129
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Calabria unexpectedly called in and criticized the Islander Insider and another newsletter, IFAN, an abbreviation for Islander Fans Awareness Network. In a subsequent issue of the Blade, Calabria wrote a full- page column ridiculing Islander Insider for its tendency to “take discredited stories, warmed- over gossip, and far- fetched rumors, and then dress them up and masquerade them as fact.” He dismissed Feeney’s sources as “about as reliable as someone’s brother- in- law’s cousin’s girlfriend who works in the mail room.” In return, Feeney wrote that Calabria was suffering from “Fonzie’s disease,” refusing to admit when he was wrong. The back- and- forth continued for weeks, with the jerseys at the center of a deepening rift between the team’s top public relations executive and the editor of a newsletter read by much of its fan base.
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