Denis Potvin is in a side hallway in the bowls of the Prudential Center in Newark, and the former Islander great and Hall of Fame defenseman puts his left hand to his face and his right hand out to the side in a show of protest.
“I think I was numb for about 30 years with emotions,” he says, thinking back to how he has dealt with decades of ineptitude on Long Island, the only home he ever knew professionally and a place where heart, in some ways, still resides. “I didn’t want to think about it much. But now I’m very excited about it and I’m glad it’s happening.”
Potvin is excited because no longer are the Islanders in a state of depression, but instead head into Saturday night’s Coliseum match against the Rangers deep in the mix of the playoff picture. If the Senators, the team for whom Potvin calls games on TV, had lost last night against the Devils, the Islanders would have taken control of the East’s sixth spot, but they didn’t, defeating New Jersey 2-0.
Though the Islanders enter the matchup in seventh place, when the eighth-place Rangers roll in, there undoubtedly will be some of that old buzz back in that crumbling building on Hempstead Turnpike.
“It’s just the strength and the rapport we had with the people, the support, it was an island that was abuzz in hockey for 10 years,” Potvin remembers. “From 1975 to when I retired [1988], it was the place to be. I remember guys saying, ‘I would love to get traded to your team.’”
The exact opposite was true as recently as this season, when defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky tried to stop his trade from the Ducks, and the year before when goalie Evgeni Nabokov attempted to stop the Islanders from claiming him on reentry waivers. And how can they be blamed, when the Islanders have not made the playoffs since 2007 and have not won a playoff series since 1993.
But former goalie Glenn “Chico” Resch remembers it the same as Potvin, and said he thinks the winning ways of the Islanders — 8-1-1 in their past 10 — can begin to change the public perception of the franchise, free agents included.
“Players can’t be honest, but when you have the attention, the money, and all the accolades, all you want to do is play on winning teams,” said Resch, who backstopped the Islanders from his rookie season in 1974 until being traded to the Colorado Rockies after spending most the 1980 Stanley Cup-winning playoff run as Billy Smith’s backup. That was the first of the Islanders’ four consecutive Cup wins, and the next year the Rockies became the New Jersey Devils, for whom Resch now calls games on television on MSG.
“The Islanders’ future looks very good, I think,” Resch said. “Especially if they can beat the Rangers, make the playoffs, [then] they will start getting on the list of places people want to go.”
There is a lot of work left to be done for the Rangers and Islanders before this regular season concludes in two weeks, but Saturday night, the attitude will not be different than its always been.
“However much energy is being measured in that series, [the Rangers] will always be at a disadvantage,” Resch said. “The Islanders will always be hungrier to beat them than they will to be to beat the Islanders. Not that they won’t be fired up, too. But it’s sort of the underdog, the second brother, type of mentality.
“Whatever it’s been for the Islanders this year, every win, every situation, there’s nothing going to have been more important to all those Islanders than that game [tonight].”
The excitement in Resch’s voice is unmistakable, and as he shifts from foot to foot, there is no question where he would want to be in a matter of hours.
“If I could come back and play one game, it would be playing for the Islanders, playing the Rangers,” Resch said, “because there’s nothing in your hockey life that seems more important that.”