Putting Four Cups on Ice

By Tom Callahan

The wonderful Islanders and their wanton goalie

The confrontation last week between hockey's sublime player and supreme team went emphatically to the team, the predominant team of any sport now, the New York Islanders. Just as they have overpowered the National Hockey League for four years running, the Islanders overwhelmed the Edmonton Oilers in a four-game final, sweeping Edmonton's freewheeling speed skaters and humbling "the Great Gretzky."

After scoring 71 goals in 80 games during the season, Wayne Gretzky scored none against the Islanders, though he assisted on four of the total six goals begrudged by New York's grouchy goaltender, Billy Smith. In the first game, Smith confounded the Oilers, 2-0. "When we didn't score," said Winger Mark Messier, "and didn't score, and didn't score, we got to pressing. We were never ourselves after that." Wanly, Gretzky called that first game "maybe the best loss we ever had," or ever would have in the series. The central figure throughout, for one reason or another, was Smith.

Smith is 32, the second oldest of the still youthful Islanders, a last remnant of the expansion draft that stocked the franchise eleven years ago. He can recall mean times and does so nostalgically. "One problem with playing on a winner," sighs Smith, "is you can't go out and just hammer somebody. It might cost you the game." Nevertheless, he went out and just hammered Gretzky in Game 2, which the Islanders won 6-3. There followed a bit of spearing and slashing, a good deal of cursing and crying, and two more New York victories, 5-1 and 4-2. This hockey ugliness was distracting, because the Islanders in the main are attractive champions.

They were constructed from Goaltender Smith celebrates his leading role the beginning by General Manager Bill Torrey, along with Coach Al Arbour for the past ten years, to be rugged enough to stand up to the Philadelphia Flyers, scourges of the Patrick Division. But the Islanders throw their weight around reluctantly. Clark Gillies, a 6-ft. 3-in., 214-lb. Gary Cooper type from Moose Jaw, Sask., throttles troublemakers almost regretfully. Mike Bossy, New York's most prolific scorer, expressly refuses to fight. They put people in mind of the Montreal Canadiens, the only other team that has ever won four straight Stanley Cups (1976-79). In fact, the Canadiens also won five (1956-60). "The Flyers banged and bruised their way to the Cup," says Bob Bourne, the Islanders' left wing. "We've won it with a style somewhere between Philadelphia and Montreal, a team known for skating."

Montreal's demise is marked not by the year of the Canadiens' last champion ship in 1979 but by the retirement of legendary General Manager Sam Pollock the season before. Torrey, bow-tied and bespectacled, cuts that sort of figure now. During the Islanders' impoverished years, when their teen-age draft choices were always exchangeable for veteran castoffs, Torrey's patience formed the foundation of a castle. That dismal first season (just twelve victories in 78 games), a 20-year-old right wing born in Stockholm, Sweden, was so clumsy that he had to be tutored by a lady figure skater. Now Bob Nystrom's name appears four times on Lord Stanley's Cup.

Throughout the final playoff, the Cup and hockey's entire cupboard of hallowed silverware (including the Conn Smythe Trophy, Smith's award as the tournament's Most Valuable Player) were displayed in hotel lobbies first at one venue and then the other. In Edmonton, Alta., the people who visited the Stanley Cup seemed to be on a pilgrimage. What hockey means to Canadians, the citizens of Long Island can only imagine. If some Americans are similarly moved, there are evidently not enough of them, at least in the opinion of the U.S. television networks, to justify showing the best of this game nationally. The Cup stays in suburban New York, but the game resides in Canada.

Islander players inspire themselves by pointing out how much more celebrated the Oilers are in Canada or even the Rangers are in New York City. The Islanders are unspoiled because nobody spoils them.

This season, when they posted only the sixth best record of the 21 teams in the league, self-satisfaction was said to have caught up with them, and there is probably something to that. "We had some injuries, and Philadelphia had a great year and deserved to finish first in the division," says Bryan Trottier, the Islanders' splendid center. But he also thinks there was less incentive to dominate during the season.

"Our incentive is the Cup," says Trottier, who has literally slept with the Stanley Cup, a silver bundling board cuddled between him and his wife. (Every player gets to take it home once.) "We're the best who ever skated," Denis Potvin, the captain, proclaimed after touring the ice with the Cup aloft in that lovely ceremony. But the term dynasty was not on the lips of the players. "I still don't like that word-- dynasty," said Bourne. "Four Cups. If we can win five, six, then ..." -- By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.