PHILADELPHIA — Maybe if the New York Islanders had not won four consecutive Stanley Cup titles in the early 1980s, the significance of their remarkable rally in the 1975 NHL playoffs would be greater.
But the players from that team have never held a reunion.
“We got together in March for a reunion, but it was to celebrate the Stanley Cup years,” former Islanders forward Lorne Henning said. “I guess if we had never won a Stanley Cup, that [1975] team would have more importance because it was a special group.”
Here we are 33 years later and the Philadelphia Flyers find themselves in the same predicament of trying to overcome a 3-0 series disadvantage against the powerful Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference final.
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The Islanders and the Toronto Maple Leafs – another 33 years before the Islanders, in 1942 – are the only teams to win four consecutive games to claim a Stanley Cup playoff series.
“It's really amazing, isn't it?” said Henning, now the director of player personnel for the Vancouver Canucks. “I don't know why it hasn't happened more often.
“When the Boston Red Sox did the same thing against the New York Yankees [in 2004 to become only the third sports franchise in North America to turn the trick], they used our comeback as motivation. You realize just how special our accomplishment was.”
Henning and former teammates such as Clark Gillies recalled the situation was perfect for the Islanders to succeed in their second-round rally. They pulled off an upset in the best-of-three first round over the rival New York Rangers, when J.P. Parise scored in overtime, and continued their outstanding play against the Penguins.
“I remember after we beat the Rangers, [Rangers forward] Derek Sanderson said we'd never win another playoff game,” Gillies said. “He was looking like a genius.”
Pittsburgh netminder Gary Innes had stymied the young Islanders in the first three games of the series. But then Islanders coach Al Arbour made his now famous speech in which he said any player who didn't believe they could storm back in the series could take his equipment off and leave the team.
“Al was the glue that kept us together,” Henning said. “He had a bad back and he was in and out of traction. We saw what he was going through.”
In the fourth game of that series, the Islanders' game came together. They received strong goaltending and pucks started getting past Innes.
“There was no real secret,” Gillies said. “You have to remember that we were having so much fun back in those days. For a lot of us, the playoffs were a new experience and we were just going out and playing hard.
“Beating the Rangers was a big milestone. To beat the big-city boys from New York was quite a feather in our cap. Win or lose, we already had accomplished a lot.”
Henning pointed out another remarkable development that special spring. The Islanders fell three games behind the Flyers in the semi-final and won three in a row to tie the series, only to lose the deciding seventh game.
While the current Flyers don't have many good vibes to build on for tonight's critical fourth game, Philadelphia coach John Stevens shuffled his lines at practice yesterday.
Daniel Brière was between Mike Richards and Scott Hartnell, while Brière's usual left winger, Vaclav Prospal, was with R.J. Umberger and Joffrey Lupul. On the fourth line, Patrick Thorsen replaced Steve Downie, whose miscues in the past two games led to two timely Pittsburgh goals.
“You can't feel sorry for yourselves,” Stevens said. “We've said it all year that we can't look outside the locker room. There's nobody outside the locker room that is going to help us. There's nobody outside the locker room to blame. It's all of us inside the locker room that need to play better.”
