The Not Ready for Prime Time '75 Islanders, an Initiation

YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER your first time, even if things didn't turn out the way you imagined they would.

What I recall most about my first time was the helmets. I didn't expect to see so many of them wearing helmets.

Fifty years ago this week, an unfathomable interval in the life of a sports fan, I went to my first National Hockey League game: the Vancouver Canucks vs. the New York Islanders, at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum.

I'm not sure how many hockey games I'd watched before that on New York's WOR, channel 9. SportsChannel wasn't yet a thing. We wouldn't get cable TV for another six years. 

But I was turning 10 and my folks had an idea. For my birthday I got a stick, a street hockey ball, a pair of roller skates and my first Islanders jersey: royal blue with orange and white trim. That and they were taking me and some pals to my very first game. 

We lived about eight miles from the coliseum and the entire guest list could fit in two good-sized 70s-era sedans. I recall writing out the invites myself, promising each kid would get a box lunch... KFC-style fried chicken in a cardboard box.

Dad had been a Rangers fan, so for him this was something of a concession. The Islanders were still very much the new kids in town. The coli had opened only a few years earlier, first housing the peripatetic Nets of the American Basketball Association and their locally-grown star, Julius Erving.

The Islanders were born out of NHL necessity, or maybe panic, in 1972 because the rival World Hockey Association was setting up and Long Island looked ripe for its New York franchise.

The visitors in their road blues.

Nope said Nassau County's government. They wanted the NHL and the NHL wanted Long Island, even if it was Rangers country. The Blue Shirts' objection to that incursion was mollified by money, a $4 million indemnity fee paid just to allow the Islanders on their turf. 

Their first year was bad. Very very bad. The Isles went 12-60-6, setting league records for the most losses and worst overall record. But badness had a reward and his name was Denis Potvin, the first overall pick in the 1973 amateur draft and a future Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman.

He stiffened the defense as head coach Al Arbour started building a systemically-sound hockey team. They won just seven more games in year two, but reduced their goals allowed by 100. The 74-75 season would be a great leap forward.

Bolstered by the acquisitions of bona fide NHL forwards J.P. Parise and Jude Drouin a month earlier they played better hockey, even if their overall talent level was still relatively modest. First season holdovers Billy Harris and Bobby Nystrom were their big guns on offense, joined by a burly rookie out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, future Hall-member Clark Gillies.

On game day, their record stood at 24-20-15. Portentously their previous three games had been a tie and two losses.

We filed into our mid-ice seats in time to watch the players come out for their warmups, the Islanders in their home whites, the Canucks in their road blues with that weird hockey stick in-a-rink crest.

And there were lots of guys wearing helmets. Remember this was 1975. Helmets were hardly commonplace and wouldn't become mandatory for a few years yet, even then only for players who entered the league after June 1, 1979. 

Me and my friends were a bit perplexed. But this was hockey and here we were. Time to drop the puck.

The lineups.

LET'S GO ISLANDERS!!!

Fleet rookie Bobby Bourne put the home team on the board at 12:33 of the first period, his 14th goal of the season, with assists from Garry Howatt and Bert Marshall. Each team killed a two-minute holding penalty and the first period ended 1-0 Islanders.

Enter John Gould.

Enter who?

John Gould, right wing for the Canucks, in the midst of what would be the best seaso of his 9-year NHL career. Acquired a year earlier from the Buffalo Sabres for 6'3, 220-lbs defenseman Jerry "King Kong" Korab, Gould, 25, was coming off a season where he'd notched a modest 13 goals and 12 assists.

Today would sort of be his coming out party, starting with a tying goal at 4:24 of the second period, with assists from Mike Robitaille and Paulin Bordeleau. 

Each side killed a minor penalty during that middle stanza and the game went to the third knotted at one. 

For 10 minutes the tension mounted as the time ran down. Then Gould scored his second, beating the not yet legendary Billy Smith, breaking the tie with assists from Bob Dailey and Chris Oddleifson. Seven minutes later Gould tallied another, with a helping hand from Oddleifson and Gregg Boddy. It was his first NHL hat trick. 

With slightly more than three minutes left, it was 3-1 Vancouver. Crap!

His 1976 Topps card.

Arbour gambled, pulling Smith for an extra skater. His gambit backfired. Canucks center Gerry Meehan scored an EN and that was that. Unhappy birthday to me.

Gould had goals 24, 25 and 26, en route to a career-high 34, and 65 total points. He racked up 32 goals and 59 points the next year, after which his production faded away. 

The Canucks finished first in their division, going 38-32-10. But Vancouver was vanquished in the quarter-finals by the Montreal Canadiens, four games to one.

The Islanders, on the other hand, were poised to shock the hockey world. Finishing 33-25-22, they made the playoffs and knocked out the Rangers in a decisive first round game three, winning 11 seconds into overtime on a goal by Parise with an assist from Drouin.

They'd move on to face the Pittsburgh Penguins, lose the first three games of that series, then rally to take the next four. The Isles tried the same trick with the soon-to-be Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers, but their luck ran out in game seven of the semi-finals.

But they Islanders had served notice. Not yet the dynastic powerhouse they'd soon become, they'd be back. Armed with Potvin, Bourne, Gillies, Nystrom, Smith and more, led by Arbour, they'd be back. And so would I.

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