Sports rivalries have existed ever since organized sports began to be played. The numbers of rivalries have grown and grown to the point where, in the 21st Century, they are as commonplace as dust in the apartment of a single man.
But, even with all of the heated conflicts that exist today, there are some that hover higher than the rest, and glow with more fire and more intensity than the majority of those that are contested.
There are historic rivalries. There are rivalries that are stoked because of proximity.
There are rivalries that are provoked because of repeated heated battles. There are rivalries that have happened because of a singular event.
There are rivalries that were built and soared like comets and were suddenly extinguished. This is a story of a rivalry that took a bit of time to simmer but has become both playful and intense, sometimes hateful but now, will never be forgotten.
For a rivalry to be real, generally, the teams have to have moved from positions in which one was always superior, to one in which the results are seemingly always in doubt. And both sides have to have some animus toward each other. It can’t be a true rivalry if one team hates another but the hated team doesn’t care about the first teams acrimony.
In the early 2000s, the fans of the National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators despised the Toronto Maple Leafs. Their disgust for their neighbours down the 401 was palpable. The Ottawa sports radio station had someone write and record a song about how much they disliked the Leafs.
It was sung to the tune of Blink 182’s All The Small Things and was titled All The Leafs Stink. There was even a line in there that went “Darcy Tucker/That little f***er”.
If you asked the Ottawa fans, and maybe even the players on the Senators, they would have regarded the Maple Leafs as rivals.
But the Leafs did not look upon Ottawa the same way at all. They looked at the Montreal Canadiens as their true rivals. Their disdain of the Senators and the so-called rivalry manifested itself into consistent playoff series victories over Ottawa back at the beginning of the 21st Century.
The Battle of Quebec
In 1979, the NHL absorbed four teams from the World Hockey Association. The Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques all came over to the established league when the WHA folded after the 1978-79 season.
The Nordiques would create a little bit of an issue for the well established Canadiens.
Montreal had long enjoyed a hockey monopoly in the province of Quebec. And that monopoly was also accompanied by a lot of success both on the ice and on the bottom line. As the Nords entered the league, Montreal was the reigning Stanley Cup champion and had won the Cup in each of the previous four seasons.
As time passed, the Habs’ rose had begun to lose its bloom and the Nordiques began to rise from the trash heap of expansion to become a power in the league. By the 1983-84 season, it was Quebec who had become the superior team in the standings and the former champions were now looking up at a new and formidable foe.
Over that five year period, the rivalry had been simmering and it all came to a boil in the spring of 1984. It culminated in the Good Friday Massacre, a couple of massive, full-team brawls that took place in Game 6 of their second round series. Montreal came into this game leading the series three games to two.
When the second melee occurred before the start of the third period, Quebec had been leading the game 1-0. Once the actual play resumed again, the Nordiques scored again to take a two-goal lead with a couple of minutes gone in the frame.
But then, the Habs scored five unanswered goals to win the game 5-2 and take the series in six games. THIS was now a full-blown rivalry.
Montreal would go on to lose in the next round to the eventual conference champions, the New York Islanders. The Isles were the defending Cup champions as well but were defeated by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and the Edmonton Oilers in the Final series in a figurative passing of the torch. You see, after Montreal had won four straight Cups to end the 1970s, the Islanders did the same thing to start the 1980s.
Then the Oilers won four of the next five.
Anyway, let’s look at those Islanders before they had all that success.
In 1972, the WHA’s New York Raiders were looking to set up shop in the newly constructed Nassau County Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. County officials weren’t really sure if the WHA constituted a true major league enterprise and they went to William Shea to see if he could advocate for the NHL could put a team into the Coliseum. Shea had been instrumental in putting the Mets into Queens, New York and there had been plenty of precedent for having two New York teams in football and basketball as well.
NHL President Clarence Campbell was quite amenable to having a second team in the New York market. The established Rangers, however, were not. But when it was explained to Rangers’ president William Jennings that the new NHL team would pay him a territorial rights fee should they join the league and the only way he would get anything from a WHA team would be if they would eventually be absorbed by the NHL, Jennings reluctantly moved on board.
The Beginning of Rangers/Islanders 'Co-Existence'
And so, in the fall of 1972, the New York Islanders began play in the beautiful new Coliseum. That first year with established NHLers like Eddie Westfall, and players they acquired in the expansion draft like Gerry Hart and Billy Smith, the Islanders struggled to a 12-60-6 record, setting an NHL mark for losses in a season.
That first season had been difficult on the ice, but it was tough off it as well. With their expansion fees AND the territorial levies they had to pay the Rangers, the team was out $11 million right from the start. The Isles had the first overall pick in the 1973 amateur draft and Montreal’s general manager, Sam Pollock, was said to be offering a boatload for that selection.
The top junior prospect that summer was Denis Potvin, a defenseman who had played for his hometown Ottawa 67s and had been trumpeted to be “the next Bobby Orr” since he began playing with the 67s when he was just 14 years old. There were plenty of rumours that Pollock had offered players and lots of cash for the rights to select Potvin. Islanders’ GM Bill Torrey rebuffed Pollock at every turn and he ended up getting his man, Potvin, with that top pick.
To say that the Islanders and Rangers were rivals from the beginning would have been overstating things somewhat.
The Rangers were an Original Six team and had been easy winners over these upstart newcomers every time they faced each other pretty much right from the start. It took a while but after a few years, the new kids on the block would eventually make things tougher for the ‘Broadway Blueshirts’.
By the 1974-75 season, the Islanders had a lineup that boasted Potvin, Westfall, Billy Smith, Glenn “Chico” Resch, Billy Harris, Bob Nystrom, Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier. They were not the big team that they would become a few seasons later, but they were definitely a team that was beginning to feel their oats. And in the playoffs in the spring of 1975, the Islanders would meet their cross-town (maybe cross-island?) rivals in the first round.
The Rivalry Begins
In the playoffs that year, the first place teams in each of the four divisions received a bye into the second round.
The second and third place teams were placed in a group from the team with the most points to the team with the least. The Islanders and Rangers finished that season with the same number of points, 88.
But because they had more wins, the Rangers would be given home ice advantage in the best-of-three opening round series.
Yes, you read that correctly.
BEST-OF-THREE!
Game 1 was to take place on April 8, 1975 at Madison Square Garden. The Ranger faithful (and maybe the Ranger players) looked at the Islanders as some road kill they could drive past on their way to the second round. Also, around the Ranger playoff dates at the Garden, the Barnum & Bailey Circus had been going on as well.
In that first game, Brad Park and Pete Stemkowski scored in the second period and the old-guard Rangers had a comfortable two-goal lead as the teams headed into the third period. But Billy Harris and Jean Potvin (big brother of Denis) scored in the third period for the Islanders. With eight minutes left in the opening game of the series, the two New York teams were tied.
Less than two minutes after Potvin’s goal, Clark Gillies scored the eventual game winner to give the Isles a surprise 1-0 series lead over the Rangers. Chico Resch stopped 29 of the 31 shots the Rangers directed his way. Ed Giacomin stopped only 22 of the 25 shots he faced.
A couple of nights later, in a fight and penalty filled match on the Island, the Rangers blew out their juniors by a count of 8-3. It was Gilles Villemure in goal for the Rangers on this night while both Resch and Smith saw action for the Islanders. In the minds of the Ranger fans, this was a restoration of sanity and the world was back on its axis again. The teams would meet at the Garden again the next night.
Friday, April 11, the circus took a rest.
But the Rangers’ supporters must have thought that the animals had been let out of their cages, for something was amiss. The Islanders got a goal from Gillies in the first period and two more from Denis Potvin in the second and went into the intermission with a 3-0 lead!
But then, the Rangers’ Bill Fairbairn scored twice and Steve Vickers got another one just fourteen seconds after Fairbairn’s second tally and the game was tied after regulation time. The fans at Madison Square could exhale.
Everything was just fine. Or was it?
Al Arbour might have made a speech that peeled the paint off the walls after that third period, or not, but whatever he said, worked. The Islanders’ Jean-Paul Parise scored a goal after just eleven seconds of extra time and the newcomers had defeated the Rangers in their very own building!
Before this series and this final game, the Rangers and Islanders were ‘co-existing’. Now, a rivalry was born!!
But that is not the best part of the story.
A Magnificent Islanders' Tale
The Islanders moved on to face the Pittsburgh Penguins in a second-round best-of-seven series. They lost Games 1 and 2 at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, otherwise known as “The Igloo”, and then came home to the Coliseum and lost in Game 3.
None of the games were blowouts, but they were losses just the same. Some of the players got together and tried to figure out why they had played so well against the Rangers and were now not getting the same results against the Penguins.
They isolated it down to one thing. When they were playing the Rangers and winning both games at Madison Square Garden, their games were sandwiched in between nights of the circus. What did they have at circuses in the 70s? Elephants. What happens after elephants eat their food? They poop it out. The arena in Manhattan smelled like a barn during the times the Isles were playing there.
In order to win, the team needed that odour around them.
So, down by a count of three games to none and with nothing to lose, they did what they felt they had to do. They had a friend of Billy Harris’ go over to MSG, steal a bag of elephant dung from the circus and bring it back to the team before Game 4 on the Island. Soooo, you ask, what happened next?
Well, the Islanders had this bag of elephant feces and they kept it in their dressing room. In the first three games of the series, the Penguins had scored fourteen goals. In Game 4, the Islanders held Pittsburgh to 28 shots and allowed them a single goal.
They won the game 3-1 and now trailed the series three games to one. But they felt like they were back. Back like Frank Costanza, bay-BEEEEEE!!
Game 5 took place at The Igloo. The Islanders, with their stink bag in tow, managed just 19 shots on the Pittsburgh goal and Chico Resch faced 38 Penguins pucks.
But Resch was incredible and the Isles got an empty net goal from Jude Drouin to double the Pens by a score of 4-2.
They were heading back to Long Island with the ability to tie the series up with a victory on home ice in Game 6.
The Islanders came out firing but the Pens’ Gary Inness was outstanding and he kept the game scoreless through twenty minutes.
Just over four minutes into the second period though, the teams exchanged goals 49 seconds apart. Ralph Stewart put the Isles up 1-0 and Pierre Larouche tied it up not long afterward. With just less than five minutes left in the second, Garry Howatt put the home team up for good in this one.
After 59 minutes, it was still a 2-1 game.
Inness was pulled for an extra Pittsburgh skater but that move backfired. The Isles scored a couple of empty net goals in the final minute to take a 4-1 win. The series was now tied and down to a one game, winner-moves-on, loser-goes-home game in Pittsburgh.
Of course, the Islanders would bring their ‘lucky’ bag with them. Or, at least, one of the equipment guys would bring that thing.
At their home rink, the Penguins came at the Islanders early. Clark Gillies and Bob Paradise dropped the gloves less than three minutes into the period.
Pittsburgh peppered Resch with shot after shot without scoring a goal. 17:25 in, Dave Lewis and Bob Kelly traded punches. Less than a minute after that, Pittsburgh’s Colin Campbell and the Isles’ Andre St. Laurent exchanged high sticks. The period ended with Gerry Hart and the Pens’ Lowell MacDonald going at each other. But neither team scored.
The teams stuck to hockey in the second period.
There were only three minor penalties in that twenty minute window. After out-shooting the Islanders 14-5 in the opening period, the Penguins did the same thing in the middle frame by a count of 11-6. But, just as in the first period, neither team was able to solve the other team’s goaltender. Resch and Inness were perfect through forty minutes.
The third period brought chance after chance for the home team, but Resch faced every shot down. After 54 minutes of play it was still a 0-0 game. But an errant breakout pass from a Pittsburgh defenseman was intercepted by the Islanders’ Bert Marshall. He fed it over to Ed Westfall and, at the 14:40 mark of the third period of the seventh game of the series, Westfall put the puck past Gary Inness.
That goal was the only tally of the game and it gave the Islanders one of the greatest comebacks in Stanley Cup history.
They had come back from a 3-0 deficit to win their second-round series over the Penguins. The only other team to trail in a series 3-0 and overcome that to win were the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs. They defeated the Detroit Red Wings to take the Cup that year.
The improbable win didn’t necessarily come as a surprise to Al Arbour, the Isles’ coach. “Nobody picked us to make the playoffs, nobody picked us to beat the Rangers and nobody picked us to come back against Pittsburgh,” Arbour told the assembled media.
Eddie Westfall, the man who scored the series winning goal said, after the game, “This team has had its back to the wall all season, but it always seems to come back.”
After the sixth game of the series, it’s reported that Resch kissed the goalposts. Perhaps, he appreciated the work they had done for him in the previous three games. But after Game 7, Pittsburgh coach Marc Boileau didn’t think that Resch was as good as people were making him out to be.
“There were a lot of pucks laying around the net and there were a lot of pucks he didn’t glove. It’s a 0-0 game. Syl Apps hits the crossbar, he hits Resch in the mask one time, and Lowell MacDonald deflects the puck and it hits the post. But what can you do?” As any goalie would have told Boileau after that game, the posts are part of a goalie’s equipment. That’s the way the puck deflects.
The Incredible 1975 Islanders vs. Flyers' Series
The Islanders stayed in Pennsylvania for their third-round series, albeit closer to home. The defending Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers were their next opponent. History repeated itself when the Flyers took the first two games at the Spectrum and then won Game 3 on Long Island. In fact, the Flyers blanked the Isles in the first and third games. Then, the Power of the Poop returned.
When you think of that Flyers’ team, you think of Bernie Parent as their goalie. But in the warmup before Game 1, Gary Dornhoefer took a shot that hit Parent on the inside of the knee and he had to be taken to the hospital. Wayne Stephenson would have to play in his place.
He was excellent in a 4-0 win.
Stephenson was back in for Game 2 and this time the Islanders touched him up for four goals. The problem was that the Flyers got four on Billy Smith as well and this one went to overtime. Bobby Clarke got the winner less than three minutes into the extra period. The Isles claimed Clarke kicked it into the net behind Smith but Clarke said it went in off his foot. No matter. The Flyers led the series 2-0 heading back to Uniondale.
Bernie Parent was back for the third game of the series and his teammates made sure that the Islanders offense was kept to a minimum. They allowed just 14 shots on their returning goaltender in the entire game. Reggie Leach got the game’s only goal thirty seconds into the third period and then kept the home team away from Parent.
The Associated Press’ Frank Brown declared that “the clock is approaching midnight for this season’s Cinderella team (the Isles)”. Al Arbour begged to differ from that assessment though. “Our power play was awful. But I’ll tell you this. We are going to fight until the last second.” Arbour’s comments would prove to be prescient. ‘The Essence of the Elephant’ would not be quelled!
Indeed, the Islanders would not go down without a fight. Or maybe a couple. Ed Westfall scored a power play goal just under five minutes into the opening period of Game 4 to give his team a 1-0 lead. Halfway through that first period, Resch faced down a penalty shot attempt by Bill Barber to keep it a 1-0 score. A little later, Bob Nystrom and Ed Van Impe dropped the gloves and it was getting fractious. Nystrom got tossed from the game.
By the 12:49 mark of the middle frame, it was 3-0 for the Isles after goals from Gerry Hart and Ralph Stewart. Dave ‘The Hammer” Schultz was one of those dispensable players for the Flyers. He had served a misconduct penalty to start the second and not long after the third Isles’ goal, he decided to do something to get his team back into the game.
What Schultz did was give Garry Howatt a high stick and then the two exchanged punches. This was 22 seconds after Stewart’s goal. Schultz’ manoeuvre worked though. After the Flyers killed off his high-sticking penalty, they closed out the period by potting a couple of goals to make it a one-score game at 3-2.
The Flyers obviously got a lift heading into the third period and just under five minutes into that final twenty minutes, Rick MacLeish scored and the game was now tied. The Flyers had a couple of power plays in the last nine minutes of regulation time but couldn’t get a puck past Resch. This one was going to need overtime.
That second Flyer man advantage stretched into the extra time and after killing that penalty, the Isles managed to score on Parent. Jude Drouin lifted a backhand shot over the leg of the Flyers’ goalie at 1:53 of overtime to give his team some life as the series headed back to Philadelphia. “It was me or Parent,” Drouin said after the game.
“If I had missed it, I would have shot myself.”
Game 5 was back at the Spectrum but looking at the first period, you would have thought that it was on the Island the way the Islanders came out. Most of the first period was played in the Philadelphia zone and the Flyers didn’t get their first shot on Chico Resch until after the nine-minute mark.
That domination wasn’t necessarily reflected on the scoreboard however. Yes, the Islanders did come out of that opening period with the lead but it was only by a single goal. J.-P. Parise banked one in off the post behind Parent at the 14:19 mark. But that was it.
Fred Shero read his team the riot act after that first twenty minutes and they came out with a renewed vigour in the second.
They sent wave after wave at Resch but he withstood every Flyer advance. The Flyers outshot the Isles 17-6 in that middle frame but the only goals were scored by the visitors.
Billy Harris scored on a 45-footer that Parent got most of, but it managed to squirt through and cross the line three quarters of the way through the period. Less than three minutes later, Drouin raced down the left side and his inside-out move left Flyers’ defenseman Tom Bladon pantsless as he skated in alone on the goaltender.
He put the puck over Parent’s shoulder to make it 3-0. Bob Nystrom added another goal for the Islanders halfway through the final period. The final score was 5-1. Still alive, the Isles took the bus back to Uniondale for Game 6.
The Flyers had a couple of things they wanted to do in this game. First, and obviously, they wanted to win the game and end this series on this night.
Second, they wanted to silence the crowd early so they could achieve that first objective. They took a step toward that when Ross Lonsberry scored less than two minutes into the opening period. But they couldn’t get another one past Resch.
Both teams did everything they could to keep their opponents to the outside and not allow anything in close. It took a while but as the second period passed, the Isles began to carry the play. When Bobby Clarke took a hooking penalty at 16:10 of the second, the crowd sensed something was coming. They came alive.
On the ensuing faceoff, Westfall won the draw back to Drouin who was at the right point. He moved the puck across to Denis Potvin, whose thirty-foot laser got past Parent on the short side and just like that the game was tied. Gerry Hart scored 3:42 into the third and after that, it was all hands on deck, as the Flyers did everything they could to get the tying goal. Resch and his mates held on though for the 2-1 win and for the second straight series, the Isles had come back from a 3-0 deficit to tie things up.
Game 7 - Islanders vs. Flyers - 1975
Their final task would be a difficult one.
They would have to go back into the Spectrum and defeat the defending Stanley Cup champs in their building, in front of their screaming fans. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Sabres had dispatched the Montreal Canadiens and were awaiting the result of Game 7 in Philly to know who they would face in the Cup Final series.
But, at this point in time, the Flyers were a fragile bunch. The pressure was squarely on them. The Islanders were brimming with confidence. There was talk before Game 7 that the Flyers were going to bring Kate Smith in to sing God Bless America. Smith had historically been a good-luck charm for Philly. Their record with either Smith or a recording of her singing before their games was 42-3-1.
When asked about Smith coming into the Spectrum to sing, Al Arbour guffawed. “Kate Smith??!! That’s no factor. The game is played on the ice, not with music.” Resch said something similar. “Unless she brings a stick and can skate, she’s not going to score a goal against us.” Defenseman Lorne Henning said, “They can bring out Kate Smith or anyone else they want to, but I know we’re going to win.”
As far as the Flyers were concerned, there were signs that all was not well. Following the sixth game, Bobby Clarke called a ten-minute players-only meeting to, as long-time hockey writer Al Strachan put it, “lay down the law to his teammates”. Clarke’s message was clear. “Any guys who don’t play their best in the seventh game don’t deserve to be on our hockey team.”
Come game time, almost as if on cue, the Flyers trotted out the 66-year-old Ms. Smith. Almost just as quickly, Islanders captain Eddie Westfall tried to squelch any momentum this might create when he skated over to the songstress and presented her with a massive bouquet of flowers. Then all the Isles skated over and shook hands with her as they basked in the spotlight.
Kate Smith at the Spectrum before Game 7
Smith belted out God Bless America and the crowd went wild. They didn’t stop cheering as the game began. Sure enough, Gary Dornhoefer skated down the right wing and blasted a shot past Resch. Dornhoefer, a decent golfer, called it “a 3-wood shot”. This was just 19 seconds into the game. The roof almost blew off the building. Two minutes later, Rick MacLeish tipped a Bill Barber shot past Resch and the fans were delirious.
Jude Drouin scored a couple of minutes later for the Islanders while the Flyers were trying to kill a two-man disadvantage, but that was all they could muster. Two minutes after that, MacLeish scored again and it was 3-1 for Philly.
The Flyers employed a two-man forecheck and kept the Isles off balance the entire game. Parent faced only fifteen shots all night. Philadelphia fired 34 shots at Resch and scored an empty-netter late.
The final score was 4-1 for the home side. The Islanders roll was finished, but the team was not.
“It’s not the end for us. It’s just the beginning,” Al Arbour told the press after the game was over. “I’m proud of my team. They showed a lot of character in winning and a lot of character in losing tonight.”
Regardless of the loss in this game, the Islanders’ players had to be satisfied with the run they went on. A couple of seasons earlier, they were the laughingstock of the league and now they had taken the Cup champions to the absolute limit.
Denis Potvin talked about the Flyers’ captain after the game. “Bobby Clarke is one of the guys in the NHL who gets a lot of recognition as one of the team leaders and one of the greats in the league. Tonight, more than any other game in the series, he proved it.
He made the club do what he wanted them to do and they followed in his footsteps.”
Potvin continued, “If they keep playing that way, they’ll win the Stanley Cup. I hope they do because I firmly believe that the team that is able to beat us will win the Cup.”
The Flyers did win the Cup and repeated as champions. Oh, and that bag of elephant poop? Isles’ defenseman Dave Lewis addressed that as well. “We had that Madison Square Garden aroma around us all the time from when we beat the Rangers. And you thought playoff beards were weird? Our poor trainers!”
The Origin of the 'Potvin Sucks' Chant
When it comes to Denis Potvin, New York Ranger fans have a special place in their heart for him. And when I say “special”, of course, I mean that they despise him. It wasn’t always that way, but it did kind of just happen one night in the late 1970s.
On February 25, 1979, the Islanders were in Manhattan to play the Rangers at Madison Square Garden. All the stories following the game were about the fact that Mike Bossy’s ten-game goal scoring streak had been snapped. None of the stories contained anything about a hit that Potvin put on Ulf Nilsson that knocked the Rangers’ forward out of the game.
By the end of February of 1979, the Islanders were an up-and-coming team. They had the second best point total in the league behind only the three-time defending Cup champion Montreal Canadiens. The Rangers weren’t a bad group either. At that point, they were the fourth-best team, in terms of points, in the NHL. They were in second place in the Patrick Division, fourteen points behind the Islanders going into this particular game.
The Rangers’ top point-getter going into the game on that Sunday night was Nilsson. Nilsson had come over to North America to play with Bobby Hull and Swedish countryman Lars-Erik Sjoberg on a line with the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association at the inception of the league in 1972. Now, he was a speedy scorer and playmaker and an integral part of New York’s offense.
There was a point in the game when Nilsson went to get a puck in the corner in the offensive zone. Denis Potvin hit Nilsson into the boards in an effort to separate him from the puck. But in the process of being hit, Nilsson’s skate caught a rut and the contact broke the Swede’s ankle. He fell immediately to the ice as the play continued. Ranger fans were livid and directed their ire at the Islanders’ defenseman.
The check seemed routine enough to be almost innocuous, but the resulting injury put Nilsson out for the rest of the season. Losing their top scorer didn’t prevent the Rangers from knocking the Islanders out of the playoffs once the postseason began but when they got to the Cup Final against the high-flying Canadiens, they lacked the necessary firepower to compete.
The Madison Square Garden crowd began chanting “Potvin Sucks” every time he touched the puck that night and repeated it every time the Islanders visited from that point on. Eventually, the chant took on a life of its own. Originally, the MSG organist would play the tune “Let’s Go Band” and fans would take the last three notes of it and sing “Potvin Sucks”.
Over time though, the arena asked that the song no longer be played.
Most fans will chant it in fun but some people don’t know how to draw the line and at times it became dangerous for Potvin.
He spoke to the Miami Herald’s George Richards for a piece in 2009 about the whole thing. There was a night when someone almost hit him in the head with a nine-volt battery during the national anthem.
“It whizzed right by my ear,” Potvin said to Richards. During the anthem, of course, the players have their helmets removed and the lights are down so, not only could no one see the battery coming, but also, no one could see who threw the projectile. “It was very difficult in the beginning. It almost felt life-threatening. Those were pretty nasty times. They haven’t completely darkened the lights in the Garden for anthems ever since.”
Potvin has come to terms with the fact that it’s not necessarily about just him anymore. The chant has become more of just a New York thing. “Brian Leetch made a comment about it when his jersey was retired. You saw Adam Graves chuckle when he heard it. Listen, I don’t belong in that. Those guys are being honoured. But, in many ways, that sort of confirmed the fact that the fans think it’s a chant that motivates the Rangers. It’s their chant. It’s not about me or the Islanders.”
The chant has been around so long now that it has taken on a life of its own and it has been heard at venues that have nothing to do with hockey. “I was at Yankee Stadium when the Marlins played in the World Series (in 2003) and heard the chant,” Potvin said. “I crunched down into my seat. I couldn’t believe it. It happens everywhere in New York. It’s a rallying cry of sorts.”
“Now it’s like a generational thing, like passing down Giants’ tickets. It’s become pretty interesting and I can’t believe it’s gotten to this point.”
It’s certain that after all this time, there are many younger fans in New York who have no idea what the chant means or how it originated. Mike Ross was, for years, the host of Hockey This Morning on XM Radio and worked with Potvin on a regular basis.
Ross told the FiredUp Network, “I remember him saying that it transcended hockey. His daughter once attended a pro rodeo at MSG and they did it.” He continued, “I also remember him saying that he’s amazed that many of the fans who do it today have no idea why they do it.
They don’t know the history behind it.”
Indeed, it is interesting and one of those New York things that outsiders might shake their heads at but, then, it’s not necessarily wise to try to figure it out.
Nick Fotiu Plas a Trick On The Isles
Nick Fotiu had a fifteen-year professional hockey career which included parts of eight seasons with the Rangers. He was a winger who could trade punches with many of the best of them. But, in a Hockey News interview, he admitted that he was a practical joker and Jeff Marek, on his radio program, told a story once about Fotiu that illustrates how far the rivalry between the two New York clubs could go.
The Rangers were in Uniondale to play the Islanders and after the morning skate, Fotiu was walking from the visitors’ dressing room under the stands to where the players’ exit was. On that walk, in the bowels of the arena, he spotted one of those boards that teams attach to the net during intermissions for promotional purposes.
The board covers the open area of the goal and there is a small opening at the bottom that would allow a puck to enter.
A fan or fans would come on to the ice during an intermission and try to shoot a puck from center ice or the far blue line and get it into that little hole. Doing so could win the shooter a prize that could range from some promotional products, to a cash prize or in some cases, a new car.
Seeing that board, Fotiu apparently looked around and saw that the area was pretty much deserted and he was alone.
He scrambled back to the Rangers dressing room and grabbed a hand saw. He scurried over to the board and cut it so that the hole at the bottom of it was now wider. No one saw him do it and no one noticed that night when the board was placed on the net.
According to Marek, because of Fotiu’s handiwork, two fans won cars that night by hitting the now larger hole with a puck!
So Many Santas!
In December of 2003, the Islanders had been struggling on the ice and as a result, attendance was starting to lag.
They needed something to get some people into the seats, so on December 23, they decreed their game against the Flyers would be Santa Claus Night. Any fan that put on the entire Santa costume, with the hat, beard, red coat, red pants and black boots would get into the game for free.
They were expecting approximately 250 Santas to show up but about double that number arrived at the Coliseum. Part of the promotion was for all the Santas to walk on the ice during the intermission around the rink and wave at the fans.
Sounds like a fun and fan-friendly little event, right? What could possibly go wrong?
The first intermission arrived and the parade of the Santas began. The crowd was cheering as all of the red-suited jolly folks promenaded before them.
Suddenly, a couple of the Santas went rogue and decided to take off their coats. One of the men was displaying an Islanders jersey, which was fine.
But then he took off the Isles’ tarp to show off his Rangers’ sweater! Quelle horreur!!
That was too much for some of the Islanders’ fans on the rink and in the crowd. An on-ice melee followed with Islander Santas pushing and shoving the Ranger Santas.
One young kid in a Santa suit was seen pulling a Pavel Bure Rangers’ jersey off one of the Ranger Santas. The possibility of the situation devolving into something ugly was there, but fortunately, it didn’t get to that stage.
Chris Botta, a spokesman for the team told the media that “As crazy as it got”, the situation never sunk into real violence.
One of the Santas held up a sign that read “All I want for Christmas is a new GM”, which was a shot at the current general manager at the time, Mike Milbury. Botta said that the Zamboni crew was delayed but that the second period had started on time.
Some of the players, when they found out what had happened, reacted with bemusement. The Islanders’ Arron Asham, when told afterward what had happened, especially the part about the Bure sweater being taken off the one Santa, replied with “Really? That’s awesome! I hope they have that on tape.”
Darius Kasparaitis, a former Islander who was playing for the Rangers in 2002-03, had an interesting take on the whole thing. “That was the funniest thing ever. At least Rangers fans have the guts to do that. Islander fans wouldn’t do that.”
Are those ‘fightin’ words’? Only Ranger fans or Islander fans would know for sure.
Author - Howie Mooney
When he lived in Ottawa, Canada, Howie was a fixture in sports media. He covered the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders, the NHL’s Ottawa Senators, and the OHL’s Ottawa 67s for local television. He also did color commentary for Ottawa Lynx games. The Lynx were the Triple-A affiliates of the Montreal Expos and Baltimore Orioles.
He also spent time as co-host on the morning show for Ottawa Sports Radio. He was co-author of Third & Long – A Proud History of Football in Ottawa and is currently the co-host of The Sports Lunatics Show, a sports history podcast.
He is also a feature writer for the FiredUp Network, a sports website out of Toronto.
