Marian Gaborik netted the OT winner in another installment of the underrated, but fiery Islanders-Rangers rivalry (Credits: Barton Silverman/ The New York Times) |
Nassau Memorial Veterans Coliseum, storied home of the New York Islanders, is a washed white, popup circular arena that sits off the Hempstead Turnpike in Uniondale, New York. It seems to materialize the moment you see it, one second nowhere, the next second “there!” There is no faraway image, no ceremonial approach, no time to eulogize the building before you are inside it. It is dark on the outside, surely wanting of light, and the Marriot Hotel that sits next door could spare the arena a few lessons on self-promotion. Without being told who plays there, one would be as likely to guess the Charlestown Chiefs as the once-dynastic New York Islanders.
But who ever watched a hockey game from outside the rink anyway?
Inside, the Coliseum comes to life. Not the kind of life that breathes out of newer arenas where the lights are bright and the hallways are wide and talkative and the production cost belongs in Hollywood. No, the life in the Coliseum pulsates. It is robust, unselfconscious, and surges forth the moment the doors open. When the building is full – which is regrettably infrequent these days – it rocks and rollicks, almost erratically, the roars from the crowd bouncing off the walls of those congested confines. Its heartbeat is strong, though not one that a cardiologist would call sound.
To fill the Coliseum now requires a small-scale invasion of neighboring fans. On Thursday night against the Rangers, I was one of those intruders, all of us clad in royal blue Rangers jerseys, the names on our backs spanning the years from Giacomin to Gretzky to Gaborik. In the Islanders early years in Uniondale, when Rangers fans poured into the Coliseum like 10,000 slap shots unleashed at once, a night like this would have seen 10 infiltrators for every 1 hometowner. But in the decades since, the ratio has evened out, and on Thursday night the fans seemed split down the middle.
Islanders fans and Rangers fans mesh about as well two shoot-first, pass-never wingers, except there’s no playmaking center to come between them and make the relationship work. And with no mediating party, the two sides are left to torment and taunt each other, their exchange of words not infrequently resulting in a due exchange of fists. The ever-provocative fan bases know the other’s weaknesses, and revel in exploiting them. The feisty fans from Nassau and Suffolk County love reminding their counterparts that the Islanders accomplished in just 4 years what took the Rangers almost 70 years (See: 4 Stanley Cups), and that the Rangers have hoisted hockey’s holy grail just once in the past 72 years. The condescending fans from everywhere else are quick to point out that the Islanders have not won a playoff series since 1993, cannot fill their own building, and that Denis Potvin still sucks.
The way the fans comport themselves is a study in the deep implications of seniority, and, perhaps, real estate. The Islanders, winners of 4 consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980-1984, sit behind only Maurice Richard’s Canadiens in hockey’s dynastic lore. (The Canadiens won 5 cups in a row from 1955-1960.) With the likes of sharpshooter Mike Bossy, playmaker Bryan Trottier, and goaltender/swordsman Billy Smith, the Islanders of the early 80’s are still remembered today as rulers of the NHL’s last great reign. The Rangers have never known this feeling of supreme dominance; in fact, for 54 years from 1940-1994, they became familiar with just the opposite, locked in a championship drought so severe it entered that sphere where higher forces are presumed to be at work. One has to remember: in those years, an Original 6 team going half a century without winning the Cup was like a fish forgetting how to swim. And sure, the Madison Square Garden ice has certainly been home to a number of Hall of Fame talents as well, but never so many together as those juggernaut Islanders. So when the fans from the Island are the ones defending themselves, and struggling to assert their team’s legitimacy, as the fans from the City turn up their noses and look disdainfully upon them, it all feels backwards. But the Rangers are born of Original 6 heritage, blue blood pumping underneath their blue sweaters, and possess a certain grandeur that comes with tradition and time. That pthey play in Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena, in New York, New York only heightens their stately aura. And thus the fans that have very little to boast about in the way of tangible success still have high ground to stand on simply because they rolled first, and they landed on Boardwalk. (Whether or not a high school senior has done anything of distinction in four years, he is still going to stuff a freshman in his locker because that’s simply how the system works.)
Unfortunately for the Islanders, they don’t get to grow up and return the favor because the Rangers are perennial seniors in this town.
Standing in line outside Gate 16 just a few minutes before puck-drop, the energy outside the building was mounting. Imagine, for a moment, taking a battalion of Confederacy troops and a battalion of Union troops and asking them to stand in single-file line until the gates to the battlefield opened. The issues wouldn’t be ones of “cutting,” at least not in the middle-school sense of the word. From the back of the line, one particularly brazen Rangers fan unleashed one of those drawn-out, galvanizing chants of “Lets-Go-Ran-gers!” that isn’t so much a cheer as a battle cry, and that probably would have touched off an avalanche on some faraway peak if there were any mountains on Long Island. His surrounding comrades, enlivened by this de facto declaration of “Chaaaaaarge!”, applauded their general’s efforts with the time-honored quintuple clap, which, of course, only elicited more chanting. (If audiences quintuple-clapped keynote speakers upon their finish, would they have to deliver the entire speech again? Someone has to try this.)
Through security, which consisted of an old-fashioned, perfunctory pat-down and a ticket scan, and into the claustrophobic hallways, the odds of a pregame altercation grew. In the Coliseum, each section is closed off by a wide set of double doors, making the one circular hallway, which provides access to every seat in the building, almost a separate arena in itself. Imagine now, those two battalions merging together with legions of others, rushing upstream and downstream, shoulder-to-shoulder, searching for their designations on the battlefield. Many, of course, had taken their places already, and each time one of those doors swung open, the fermenting fervor inside rushed out into the hallway like a strong gust of wind. The hallway was merely on the outskirts of a perfect storm.
We made it to our seats, about 15 rows up from the ice behind Evgeni Nabokov, who was soon to play a spectacular game that would turn back the clock to his years in San Jose. The tickets were valued at $40.00 each, a price itself redolent of former days. In Madison Square Garden, one cannot enter the building for less than $70.00, and there we were in Nassau Coliseum, a flubbed one-timer away from the Islanders goalie, with $40 tickets in our hands. Maybe the Nassau-Coliseum Islanders are a casualty of their own munificence. (It was, indeed, this great discrepancy of price that originally attracted so many priced-out Rangers fans to the Coliseum in the ‘80s.)
Our section was full of Rangers fans, a noticeable patch of blue in a turbulent sea of orange and white, red and blue. As out-of-town fans always do, we banded together, taking an antagonistic delight in filling the home team’s arena. This deviant satisfaction, it seems, runs especially deep in Rangers fans, who relish seizing the arena and knowing Islanders fans can’t do anything about it.
A brief respite from the enmity and strife was delivered by the singing of the National Anthem. All 17,000 partisans rose as one, and for a moment it seemed a sense of unity might be percolating through the building. Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight… the crowd was quiet. Could they be setting aside their differences in the name of national pride? O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming…but the singer had to take a breath. And in a definite second, the solidarity crumbled. Shouts from around the arena, pellucid in pitch, rained down onto the ice, almost all of them declaring who sucks. The Islanders suck, the Rangers suck, and, perhaps most of all, Potvin sucks. It was a terrific juxtaposition: the celebration of our country against the denigration of the person sitting two seats away.
We are all Americans, but we are first either Rangers fans or Islanders fans.
As the Anthem came to a close, and the singer bravely belted out the last two lines, the cheering reached a crescendo. Not in praise of the performance, which was impressive to be sure, but in recognition that the game was here, was now.
Now sufficiently roused, the fans broke into competing chants, directed as much at the players on the ice as the opposition in the stands. From the Rangers camp, the tone was truculent, intending to rankle and rile the hometown fans. From the Islanders camp, the tone was territorial, intending to hold ground. But the chants and the fans shared this in common: they did not take their cues from the game. Rather, they cued the game itself. For when the Rangers and Islanders play in the Coliseum, it is not so much the players’ performance that draws cheers from the crowd, but the crowds’ cheers that draw performance from the players. Think about that. The fans do not wait for a goal, or a hit, or a save to cheer, as is customary in professional sports, but find inspiration simply in being there. Interestingly, an element of order, if not cooperation, existed in the back-and-forth between the fans. Each time one chant stopped to clap and take a necessary breath, a counter chant filled the air. Lets-Go-Ran-gers! Let’s-Go-Is-land-ers! Let’s-Go-Ran-gers! Let’s-Go-Is-land-ers! They would never admit it, but in a way, the two sides were working together. (One particular Islanders fan though, whose ties to the team run deeper than most, and who happens to be my Mom, insisted on chanting over the Rangers fans. Screw order, after all.)
The play on the ice paralleled the electricity in the crowd. It was fast and hard hitting, following a thrilling up-and-down pace – one rush this way, one rush that way. As Ranger forwards barreled after Islander defensemen on the forecheck, malicious cries of “Kill him!!” were not uncommon from a pair of faithful Blueshirts fans in our section. These two, I could tell, had been absorbed in this rivalry for quite some time, at one point even reciting the passé Fishsticks chant that used to torment Islander fans in the late 90’s. (A reference to the fisherman logo the Islanders unveiled in 1995, which bore striking resemblance to the Gorton’s fisherman.) The brasher one of the two – that is, the taller of two giraffes, the louder of two jet engines – also boasted a finely tuned Potvin-Sucks whistle, a skill that seemed to reflect years of practice.
The Islanders struck first, just under 12 minutes in, when speedster Michael Grabner – seriously, he can fly – picked up a puck in the high slot, and all in one fluid motion, pulled it around Rick Nash and wired a shot over Henrik Lundqvist’s glove. After the horn blared, the goal song ran it course and the dust had settled on a 1-0 Islander lead, the hometown fans belted out chants for their team, happy that, for now at least, the enemy camp had gone quiet.
From thereon, Nabokov and Lundqvist took control of the game. At both ends, they stymied shooters and swallowed pucks, Lundqvist standing particularly tall late in the second, Nabokov early in the third. The seasoned fans, sophisticated and refined not so much in their behavior but certainly in their taste for the game, appreciated the goaltending battle. Each save by Nabokov was celebrated with chants of “Na-by! Na-by!”, while Lundqvist’s heroics were praised with cries of “Hen-reek! Hen-reek!” The fans, ever looking for the last word, modified their rivals’ cheers by attaching one word at the end: Sucks!! The implication, I think, was not that either one of the goalies sucked at stopping pucks, but that they sucked becausethey were stopping pucks. How presumptuous of them!
Midway through the third period, hell began to break loose in the upper bowl. Around the arena, necks craned skyward as the fans fixed their gaze on a pair of pugilists slugging out their differences. Earlier in the game, the Rangers’ Stu Bickel and the Islanders’ Joe Finley squared off to fight, but were separated by the officials, so these two aggressors in the stands figured they’d finish the script. It wouldn’t be Rangers-Islanders without a fight, anyway. Though there was still no playmaking center to come between the two –playmaking centers don’t fight – a band of security guards did their futile best. After a few tumbles down the stairs and a couple of calls for backup, the guards finally gained control over the situation, and escorted the men outside. Bickel and Finley, slapped on the wrists with unsportsmanlike minors, got off easy.
Back down on the ice, the Islanders were clinging to a 1-0 lead. Rangers coach John Tortorella was rolling his top two lines, shift after shift, and Nabokov was under siege. With 5:30 to go, and the Russian netminder looking like he might steal one, playmaking center Derek Stepan of the Rangers fired a shot toward goal that was deftly deflected in by the indomitable Rick Nash. (Indeed, a deflection was likely the only way the Rangers were going to solve a locked-in Nabokov.) As Nash threw his hands in the air, Rangers fans leapt from their feet and roared, their cheers caught between elation and catharsis. Beating Nabokov opened their emotional valves.
The Coliseum now evolved into Madison Square Garden East. Chants for the Rangers were so many, it was hard to latch onto just one, almost like trying to grab a dollar bill in one of those money-blowing machines. They rained down from the rafters, echoing throughout the building, the fans too giddy to attempt synchronization. The arena was drowning itself out. I have seen some amazing games at Madison Square Garden, been part of some rollicking crowds, but never have I heard a building rock like that.
The game, at this point already feeling like a Classic, moved to overtime. On nights like this one, extra hockey is only fitting. But 42 seconds in, on the power play, certified Islander-Killer Marian Gaborik (19 goals in 3½ years) decided it was time to call it a night, and blasted a shot through Nabokov’s legs from the top of the circles. His teammates on the bench piled over the boards and onto the ice while Lundqvist threw his hands over his head and raced out of his net, a scene more commonly seen in May and June. But the game had a playoff-like atmosphere throughout, and was worthy of a playoff-like celebration.
As the fans were leaving, the cheers continued. Up the stairs, through the hallways, and out into the blustery night – “Let’s-Go-Ran-gers!!” – a declaration of territory seized and a team conquered, at least for now, at least for tonight, at least until the two teams meet here again.
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