My first hockey memory is of Wayne Gretzky hoisting his first Stanley Cup. His Edmonton Oilers had just defeated the incumbent New York Islanders, who had won the previous four trophies. Despite hailing from Long Island, I had no recollection of those victories. I was too young to remember.
Those championships mattered to my brother — nearly a decade older than me — because they were his childhood team. He was eight years old when they won their first Cup. My Rangers-fan father couldn’t have cared less; by that point he’d been waiting his entire life for the Blueshirts to win Lord Stanley. Their 1940 championship happened before he was born.
There was a definite schism in my house. The younger generation pulled for the Isles while the older one staunchly supported the disappointing Rangers. I took an entirely different road and combined into a love of the Red Wings my Canadian grandmother’s Detroit-area roots, Cameron Frye’s Gordie Howe jersey in ‘Ferris Beuller’s Day Off’ and a young superstar with my first name.
The Wings were horrible in the ’80s. By all appearances, it was a bad choice. It took 11 years from the moment I started rooting for them before I saw Steve Yzerman raise the Cup over his head. That’s about 8 or 9 years longer than it took my brother to exalt in an Islanders championship, if I put his earliest memory at five or six years old.
I had some love for the Islanders, though. I rooted mildly for Pat LaFontaine and Pat Flatley, the Sutter boys and Bryan Trottier — the inspiration for Yzerman donning the 19 sweater — and a host of other likeable players. While at a Coliseum game during the 1986-87 season, I physically bumped into Mike Bossy while he was out with back problems. He retired shortly thereafter. I felt a little guilty.
But the Islanders were never my team. I chose the Wings and stuck with them. While Detroit improved, the Isles declined steadily since their last Cup in 1983. They enjoyed a few minor peaks here and there, sure, but only a tenuous argument would support the idea that Long Island could have contended for the Cup over the past 25 years.
Now, there is speculation the Islanders could move. This isn’t meant to sound disparaging, but to the few fans they have left, that might be a big deal. Yet — to a franchise in such decline, with such little promise, with such a dwindling fan base — a move might be just the thing to cure what ails them.
Long Island has proven it cannot support a sports franchise through its down years. The Island is at least as much a bandwagon community as any other place known for its fair-weather fans. Nassau and Suffolk Country denizens were content to root hard when times were good, but they have piled off during the blight.
Thinking objectively, who can blame them? Who in their right mind would want to tune in year after year to disappointment after disappointment … for a quarter of a century? While we tend to hail die-hard sports fans, there is a whiff of almost mental illness that coincides with people who don’t know when to walk away.
I’ll be the first one to cop to that illness with the Detroit Tigers, whose last World Series is barely a glimmer in my childhood memories. I didn’t give up on the Wings even when the Rangers finally won that long-awaited Cup in 1994. Or when the Devils swept my Wings in 1995, or when Detroit cruised into the Conference Finals in ’96 only to be destroyed by the Avalanche. I didn’t know when to quit my team, either … lucky for me it paid off.
But it hasn’t paid off for Islanders fans.
How long is long enough, when talking about incessant failure? Ask anyone but a Cubs fan, but I think 25 years is enough time to realize it’s time to pack up and seek greener pastures. The only thing to mitigate that would be consistent fan support, like Detroit had through its drought, like the Blackhawks had through theirs … support that all great clubs with great fans have enjoyed … but the Islanders have no support.
It’s time they looked for it elsewhere.