“BARRY-ING THE PAST” and “FLAT(AM)BUSH”
#744/#743
744. NEW YORK ISLANDERS VS PITTSBURGH PENGUINS
EASTERN CONFERENCE QUARTERFINALS
GAME ONE
APRIL 10, 2019
NASSAU COLISEUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—8.06
DRAMA—7.78
STAR POWER—6.54
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.65
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.00
LOCAL IMPACT—7.28
TOTAL: 44.31
“BARRY-ING THE PAST”
Usually when a coach walks away from his team after winning a championship he or she is retiring from the bench. But after Barry Trotz led the 2018 Washington Capitals to their first-ever Stanley Cup victory, there was no indication he wanted to hang up his whistle. There was every indication, however, that he wanted more money for his services. But for whatever reason the owner of the Caps, Ted Leonsis, didn’t want to pay Trotz (rumors are that he tried to offer the coach stock in America OnLine, Leonsis’ old company). So Trotz turned on his heels and left D.C.
Obviously, the coach who just won the championship is going to have suiters, and lo and behold, the Islanders, of all teams, won his services. Once upon a time (aka my glorious childhood), the Isles were a dynasty, but horrific ownership and personnel management had run the once-proud or-gan-eye-zation into the ground. Since being swept by the hated Rangers in the 1994 playoffs, the Isles had been essentially invisible each spring, when a young man’s thoughts turn to hockey. In the 23 seasons since (not counting the 2004-05 lockout year that wasn’t played) they had won just a single playoff series, and missed the postseason entirely sixteen times.
Trotz was hired to put a stop to the madness. He instituted a rock-ribbed defensive style that accentuated the grinding but hardly flashy talents of most of the players on the team, and built around forechecking, backchecking, and good goaltending. It worked. The Isles finished with 103 points, second in the Metro Division, just a single point behind Trotz’s old club, the defending champs in Washington. Their first round opponent would be the always dangerous Pittsburgh Penguins, led by the dynamic duo of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
Incredibly, for the first time since 1988 the Isles held home-ice advantage in a series. In 2015, the team had left their ancestral home, Fort Neverlose, aka the Nassau Coliseum, to cater to the helicopter moms and craft beer makers in Brooklyn, playing their home games at Barclays Center. The 2019 season saw the team cave to massive pressure from the fanbase and return to play half their games at the Coli, a feel-good aspect to the season that dovetailed with the Trotz hire (it didn’t hurt that the coach’s name was a homonym for the nickname of Bryan Trottier, one the franchise’s greatest stars). Such a momentous occasion as Game One of this playoff series, held on Wednesday night, April 10, 2019, demanded the puck be dropped back out on the Island, where it belonged.
The capacity crowd was lathered up, chanting “Let’s Go, Is-Land-errrrrrrrrrs” for long minutes before the teams even hit the ice. They went berserk when Tom Kuhnhackl scored just 30 seconds into the game, although it was called back on replay for offsides. But Jordan Eberle scored a minute later, and the Isles took an early lead anyway. Pittsburgh’s Phil Kessel tied the game on a shot that went between the legs of Isles goalie Robin Lehner, and a pattern was begun—the Islanders would take a lead, and the Pens would come back to tie.
Late in the first period the Isles went in front on the power play, with Eberle using a fine bit of stick work to set up Brock Nelson for an easy one right in front. But sure as the sun rises in the east, back came Pittsburgh, with a man-advantage goal of their own, this one on a deflected shot by Malkin in the second period.
It was still tied at 2-2 with 7:25 to play in regulation when New York’s Nick Leddy sent in a shot from the left point that hit a Pens defender in the shoulder and whiffleballed its way past goalie Matt Murray for the lead. Lehner had 41 saves in net for the Isles, but when the Penguins threw on an extra attacker late in the game out of desperation, he couldn’t preserve the win. Justin Schultz walloped a one-timer from the left face-off circle, and a screened Lehner couldn’t locate the rubber as it whizzed into the lower corner to tie the game.
The crowd was suddenly de-raucoused. Raucousness appeared to be back on the table, but in the dying seconds Josh Bailey hit the post for the Isles. So close, and yet, so overtime…
New York thought they had won it after a minute or so of extra action, when Kuhnhackl smashed into Murray and brought the puck with him across the goal line. The net was jarred loose, so the goal didn’t count—Kuhnkackl was denied for the second time in the game. It was far from artistic, anyway, and the fans deserved a better winning goal after this wooly affair.
They got it about three minutes later. Matt Barzal, by far New York’s most gifted offensive player, swooped in on a two-on-one break, deked Murray out of the crease, and backhanded one past him that clanked off the left post. Even as Barzal was cursing the Fates, Bailey, playing in his first-ever playoff game, came flying in to stuff in the rebound and win it for New York, 4-3 in OT.
“It just happened so quick,” said Bailey. “I wasn’t sure. It didn’t lay very flat for me. I was trying to whack it and hope it went in.”
It did go in. The Isles were ahead in the series, 1-0. The Trotz Era was already off to a good start.
AFTERMATH:
Surprisingly, the Isles went on to sweep the Pens, their first playoff sweep since winning the Stanley Cup in four games back in 1983. Pittsburgh managed just three goals in the final three games. Alas, New York’s fun didn’t last, as we are about to find out below…
WHAT THEY SAID:
“We just stayed to it. I liked our composure on the bench. There were a lot of twists and turns to that game. We didn’t flinch at all.”
—Barry Trotz
FURTHER READING:
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum by Nicholas Hirshon
VIDEO:
743. NEW YORK ISLANDERS VS CAROLINA HURRICANES
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME ONE
APRIL 26, 2019
BARCLAYS CENTER
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.69
DRAMA—8.99
STAR POWER—5.15
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.05
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.05
LOCAL IMPACT—7.39
TOTAL: 44.32
“FLAT(AM)BUSH”
Believe it or not, the Carolina Hurricanes actually won the Stanley Cup once. It was in 2006. You’d be well forgiven for not remembering it. First of all, it’s Carolina, wher hockey is about the 279th most important sport. Secondly, the major narrative that season was about their opponents, Edmonton, who came from nowhere as the eight-seed in the west and were trying to end a long (and still going) streak of futility when it comes to Canadian teams winning the Cup. They didn’t—Carolina, of all hockey-mad metropoli, won in seven games.
There was going to be a parade, but it was canceled when the N.C. State offseason basketball workouts got more ink…
Nevertheless, that 2006 team was led by familiar players like Rod Brind’Amour, Eric Staal, Ray Whitney and Bret Hedican, and rookie goalie Cam Ward became a folk hero during the run to the Cup. The 2019 Canes were largely anonymous. Even hardcore Tobacco Road hockey fans (there are at least 12) struggled to identify with this nondescript bunch. Their two best players, Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen, were Finns. There was a Swede, Nino Niederreiter, with a fun name to say, and not one but two players, Jordan Staal (Eric’s brother) and Calvin de Haan, with consecutive ‘a’s in their surnames. About the only player with any pedigree was Justin Williams, who had won three Stanley Cups, one with those ’06 Canes (his empty-netter iced the title for Carolina) and two with the L.A. Kings, when he earned the nickname “Mr. Game Seven” for his clutch play in that all-or-nothing contest (Williams holds the record for most points, 15, in Game Sevens).
Truth be told, the 2019 Canes were quite similar to the 2019 Islanders, who had zero national profile outside of their coach, Barry Trotz, and were a hard-checking group of grinders that contested every sliver of ice. Both teams had quality backstops as well—Robin Lehner, as seen above coming off a superb shutdown of the high-flying Penguins in round one, was matched up with Czech Petr Mrazek of Carolina.
So it was hardly a surprise when they played that no one could score—literally.
After sweeping Pittsburgh the Isles were full of confidence, and that was trebled when the best team in the east, the defending champion Capitals, were ousted by those anonymous Hurricanes in seven brutal games (Game Seven was decided in double-overtime). Suddenly, “Why Not Us?” was the Islanders’ mantra. There didn’t seem to be any reason why this team, with the karma fully aflame, couldn’t make a run to the Cup a la those 2006 Hurricanes.
There was just one problem—this time, they wouldn’t be playing at the old Barn in Nassau County…
Instead of sticking with what had worked so well in round one, namely playing where a team called the Islanders is meant to be playing, Long Island, the team went back to the soulless palace on Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn, the Barclays Center, and that may have been the difference. There was, officially anyway, a sellout crowd on hand, leather-lunged and beer-muscled as always, but the ineffable spirit was missing on that Friday night, April 26, 2019. The Isles hadn’t played in Brooklyn since mid-February, and the little home-rink advantages of knowing the soft spots on the ice surface and the idiosyncrasies of the dasher boards were missing.
It didn’t help that the Isles also hadn’t played in ten days, sitting on their duffs while the Canes went to the ends of the earth and back before edging the Caps, and the rust showed. They committed 25 turnovers on the night, to just 10 for Carolina. Overall, however, the game was tense and tight from the opening faceoff.
Certainly, New York had the better early chances. Josh Bailey, the hero from #744 above, had an early breakaway, but Mrazek stuffed him. He also stopped a wide-open Anders Lee in the crease, and a shorthanded try from Cal Clutterbuck. But Barzal was the focus of the Canes’ D, and without him making magic, the Isles offense was limited. The opportunities began to dry up.
Lehner kept them in it, making 31 saves, including a “woah” stop of Greg McKegg (another fun name on the Canes) on a breakaway, after Robin stacked the pads and hoped for the best. But the best save of the game wasn’t made by a goaltender. Midway through the third period Williams made a nice move behind the net and reared around to try and stuff the disk home. But defenseman Nick Leddy sprawled across the ice and blocked the shot, sending the crowd aroar and Williams to spit out his mouthguard in frustration.
Amazingly enough, the game went sixty full minutes without a goal, and headed for overtime tied at zero. When at last a goal came, it was yet another turnover that was the root cause. Clutterbuck lost possession and the Canes turned it into an odd-man break. Niederrreiter took the shot from the slot, and missed the net entirely, but the puck banked off the boards right to the onrushing Staal, alone at the right side of the net. To his credit, Staal twisted into an unnatural angle and still got plenty of wood on the carom, slamming it in off of Lehner’s skate blade for the first—and only—goal of the game.
Barclays went as quiet as Greenpoint before gentrification. The Hurricanes were up 1-0 in the series, and had shown they weren’t going to be merely another data point in the Barry Trotz Story.
AFTERMATH:
Game Two was another tight-checking, goalie-dominated affair. The Islanders led 1-0 in the third period when the Canes struck out of nowhere for two goals in less than a minute to stun the home team into virtual submission. In Raleigh, Carolina plastered the lifeless Isles in consecutive 5-2 pastings to sweep the series, the first time New York had been swept since that franchise-altering sweep at the hands of the Rangers referenced above.
The tables were thence turned once more—Boston swept Carolina in the conference finals to end Hurricane Season.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“I feel bad about it. Just returning to the Coliseum became a real rallying point. I think there’s a little intimidation that grew there. The Islanders could feel it, and the other team could feel it.”
—Ray Ferraro, former Islander, on playing at Barclays and not the Coliseum
FURTHER READING:
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
VIDEO: