This Was No Comedy Act

At least they know they won last year's NHL championship. After all, it says so right there on the Stanley Cup. See: NEW YORK ISLANDERS, 1980. Still, as the Isles leapfrogged around the continent from October to April en route to their second regular-season title in three years, a number of their best and brightest players were wondering—did anyone else know?

For example, there was the night in March when Montreal's Bob Gainey, the league's best defensive forward, told reporters that the Canadiens, St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers were the three best teams in the NHL. The Islanders? Not a mention. But the Islanders heard him. And remembered. "Someone should ask Mr. Bob Gainey, Mr. Defense, which team is best in the league now," New York Left Wing Clark Gillies said with some glee after Edmonton eliminated the Canadiens from the 1981 playoffs with a three-game preliminary-round sweep.

But Gainey's oversight served only as more evidence of what the Islanders suspected. "As a team, I don't think we ever received the respect we earned from winning the Stanley Cup," says Right Wing Mike Bossy, who scored 68 goals this season. "Last year, 'choke' was the word that followed us around," says team captain Denis Potvin, reflecting on the fact that the Islanders had scored 116 points in winning the 1978-79 regular-season title and then were beaten in six games by the N.Y. Rangers in the Stanley Cup semifinal round. "After we won the Cup in '80, the word was 'fluke.' We're going to prove to those people who doubted us all along that we're a damn good team. We're going to force people to give us that respect."

Denis, Mike, Clark, meet new believer Barry Beck. Beck is the defenseman who led the Rangers—13th place in the regular-season standings—to lopsided upsets over fourth-place Los Angeles and second-place St. Louis in the first two rounds of the come-one, come-all playoffs. Those triumphs set up the second semifinal Battle for New York showdown between the Islanders and Rangers in three years, which opened last week on the Isles' ice. Despite having finished 36 points behind the Islanders (110-74), the Rangers were confident they would be the team to advance to the finals; they remembered '79, and the Islanders hadn't beaten them in Madison Square Garden since then. But by late last Saturday night, the Rangers' confidence had been shattered. After two lopsided defeats in the Nassau Coliseum, the Rangers succumbed at last on home ice. That 5-1 rout gave the Islanders a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. "The Islanders are the best team I've ever played against," said Beck.

The Isles' general manager, Bill Torrey, believes his team may have brought upon itself some of the lack of respect it encountered this season. "We should have won the league championship by a wide margin, and when we didn't, that gave people the room they needed to question us," he says. Indeed, the Islanders had trailed St. Louis by seven points with four weeks remaining in the 80-game regular season before reeling off a finishing 12-1-4 kick that earned them the title by three points.

Last year the Islanders had been mired in the middle of the league in mid-March, before closing 8-0-4 and going on to win the Cup. The catalyst in that surge had been a Torrey-negotiated deal at the trade deadline. The Islanders got Center Butch Goring from Los Angeles for Defenseman Dave Lewis and Right Wing Billy Harris.

This year another Torrey trade on the March 10 deadline may have provided a similar spark. Torrey had been fretting over the inability of his sometimes plodding defense to move the puck out of its own zone, and over its susceptibility to heavy forechecking pressure. Also, he feared the consequences of injuries to the point men on his record-setting power-play unit, Potvin and Stefan Persson—the Islanders scored a record 93 goals on power plays this year. So Torrey dealt popular Goaltender Glenn (Chico) Resch and Center Steve Tambellini to Colorado for 24-year-old Defenseman Mike McEwen. The trade was questioned at the time. Billy Smith, who had shared goaltending duties with Resch, wasn't having a particularly good season; McEwen was prone to taking reckless gambles. His style seemed at odds with Islander Coach Al Arbour's conservative philosophy.

Though McEwen had problems adjusting to his new coach and team, he became more confident with each game. And when a puck broke Persson's jaw in the fourth game of the quarterfinal series against Edmonton, Torrey's move was more than justified. With McEwen, Potvin and Persson alternating on point, the Islanders scored 24 power-play goals in 12 playoff games, one shy of their own Cup record set in 1980.

The Islanders opened defense of their Cup by sweeping the 16th-place Toronto Maple Leafs in three games, outscoring them 20-4. But after the concurrent Montreal- Edmonton series, Oiler Center Wayne Gretzky said his club had beaten "the greatest team in hockey." He meant that in the historical sense, but the Islanders took it as yet another slight. Still, the quarterfinals lasted six games, with Edmonton giving the champions all they could handle. "Hey, it wasn't us being bad," says Right Wing Bob Nystrom, "it was them being good. But I'm glad we had a tough series; it helped prepare us for the Rangers."

At least one Ranger also was aware of the danger of using 1979's playoff upset as a barometer of this year's series. "It bugs me," said Left Wing Don Maloney. "If anyone would look at the teams, they'd know it wasn't the same." Indeed, only nine current uninjured Islanders and six current uninjured Rangers had been on hand in '79.