From 1976 to 1979, there were le magnifique Montreal Canadiens of Guy Lefleur, winning four straight Cups. From 1984 to 1988, there were the spellbinding Edmonton Oilers of Wayne Gretzky, winning four Cups with only a single fluke goal standing in the way of a fifth. In between those dynasties were your New York Islanders, four-time Stanley Cup winners, |  |
neither magnificent nor spellbinding in the traditional senses but arguably the greatest team in N.H.L. history. And in true middle-child fashion, in the lineage of these three dynasties, somehow so often overlooked in comparison with the noble, responsible eldest and the do-no-wrong, puckish youngest.
But not here. Not on Long Island. You will never be underappreciated here.Those were the days when hockey players still played with the verve and instinct learned only from hours of unsupervised pond hockey, before kids were enrolled in year-round, highly structured programs and the game became bogged down with the neutral-zone trap. Everybody should play sports with the natural anticipation of a Mike Bossy, that instinct of a pure goal-scorer who, to paraphrase Gretzky himself, goes not to where the puck is but to where the puck is going to be. More important, everybody should know the humility of a Mike Bossy. A whole generation of Long Island kids, like me, learned not just how to be champions but how to act like champions.
Think of the sliding-door theory; how things would have been different if Toronto hadn’t been so myopic as to pass you over — twice! — in the 1977 draft, probably just because you were a Quebecois. There’s a reason the Leafs haven’t won the Cup in my lifetime. Amazingly, the Rangers also passed on you twice in '77. If you'd won four Cups in the Garden? Forget it. Messier won ONE here and they still call him the Messiah.
Instead, you played in a virtual backwater, in the mallish badlands of the middle Island, in a dilapidated barn and in an era with no national cable contracts and no Internet. You were all ours. It's just unfortunate that with our Long Island accents "Bossy" rhymes with "awesome." ("Mike Bawssey? He's awesum!")
Of course, the play that stands out was the goal to win Game 1 of the ’82 finals, when you picked off Harold Snepsts’s ill-conceived clearing pass and fired home the winner with 2 seconds left. Some might call it lucky or even a miracle, but they don’t know that you did that kind of thing pretty regularly.
True story: I met Harold Snepsts when he was the coach of the Peoria Rivermen and I was working the Peoria newspaper. One day I was interviewing him and I said, “You know, Harold, I’m from Long Island and —”
“The Bossy play, right!?” he shouted.
Happy birthday to a player who will never be forgotten.
But not here. Not on Long Island. You will never be underappreciated here.Those were the days when hockey players still played with the verve and instinct learned only from hours of unsupervised pond hockey, before kids were enrolled in year-round, highly structured programs and the game became bogged down with the neutral-zone trap. Everybody should play sports with the natural anticipation of a Mike Bossy, that instinct of a pure goal-scorer who, to paraphrase Gretzky himself, goes not to where the puck is but to where the puck is going to be. More important, everybody should know the humility of a Mike Bossy. A whole generation of Long Island kids, like me, learned not just how to be champions but how to act like champions.
Think of the sliding-door theory; how things would have been different if Toronto hadn’t been so myopic as to pass you over — twice! — in the 1977 draft, probably just because you were a Quebecois. There’s a reason the Leafs haven’t won the Cup in my lifetime. Amazingly, the Rangers also passed on you twice in '77. If you'd won four Cups in the Garden? Forget it. Messier won ONE here and they still call him the Messiah.
Instead, you played in a virtual backwater, in the mallish badlands of the middle Island, in a dilapidated barn and in an era with no national cable contracts and no Internet. You were all ours. It's just unfortunate that with our Long Island accents "Bossy" rhymes with "awesome." ("Mike Bawssey? He's awesum!")
Of course, the play that stands out was the goal to win Game 1 of the ’82 finals, when you picked off Harold Snepsts’s ill-conceived clearing pass and fired home the winner with 2 seconds left. Some might call it lucky or even a miracle, but they don’t know that you did that kind of thing pretty regularly.
True story: I met Harold Snepsts when he was the coach of the Peoria Rivermen and I was working the Peoria newspaper. One day I was interviewing him and I said, “You know, Harold, I’m from Long Island and —”
“The Bossy play, right!?” he shouted.
Happy birthday to a player who will never be forgotten.
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