New York Islanders

“A flash in the pan” might be slightly harsh if trying to describe the dazzling meteoric success of the New York Islanders at their brief zenith in the early 1980s in the NHL. The team from Long Island joined the NHL in 1972, very much as New York’s second team alongside the storied (if not often successful) New York Rangers of Manhattan. No one thought much about the Islanders in their first two seasons, figuring them to be just another expansion team not worth getting excited about until 1975, when a thrilling young team led by players like Denis Potvin and Bryan Trottier, and backstopped by goaltender Billy Smith, went one step from the Stanley Cup FInals, losing to the Philadelphia Flyers in a brutal seven-game slugfest. The Islanders proved it hadn’t been a fluke in the very next year, reaching their first Finals in 1976, but losing to the all-powerful Montreal Canadiensin five games. The team met the exact fate in 1977, though at least they extended the Canadiens to six. After losing a hard-fought semifinal series to their crosstown New York rivals, the Rangers, in 1979, the Islanders, led by the heroic Mike Bossy, finally broke through in 1980 when they won their first Stanley Cup over the Flyers. The win signaled the end of the Canadiens dynasty that had dominated the late 1970s and the beginning of a new Long Island dynasty. The Isles beat the Minnesota North Stars 4-1 in the 1981 Finals, swept the Vancouver Canucks in the 1982 Finals, and swept another team called the Edmonton Oilers, starring a youngster named Wayne Gretzky, in the 1983 Finals to make it four Stanley Cups for the franchise in four years. Following that easy sweep of the Oilers, no one in Long Island thought that they had seen the team that would bring about the downfall of their Cup dynasty, but that is exactly what happened in 1984, when Gretzky and Co., one year older and wiser, returned to dethrone the Islanders from their lofty perch and win the Stanley Cup. Since that day, the Islanders have never returned to the Finals, though they have been tantalizingly close a few times, as when they lost in the Conference Finals in 1993 and 2020. Will the team ever scale the heights they once assailed so mightily all those years ago? Islanders fans still dream that it can happen. What a story it would be if it did.