Former Islanders coach Al Arbour, who guided the franchise to four consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the early 1980s, is suffering from dementia, according to Bryan Trottier, a key member of those championship teams.
In a radio interview in Buffalo, where he recently was hired as an assistant coach by the Sabres, Trottier said the 81-year-old Arbor is “going through a little tough time with dementia right now.”
Trottier, who was briefly the Rangers coach, is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
“Al was a great motivator. He was probably our father figure in the fact that we all respected him so much,” Trottier said in the interview. “He had a great command of the room and at the same time he had a big man’s presence.
“He had won a lot of Stanley Cups as a player with several different teams, he played with great players, so he always brought that credibility with him. For us to sit down with him one-on-one or when he was in front of us as a team, he had a great presence and we loved the man. … We all love Al for all of the great times we had together and his leadership.”
After a 17-year playing career as a bespectacled defenseman with four teams, Arbor coached the Blues for parts of three seasons before coming to the Islanders for the 1973-74 season. He was named the winner of the Jack Adams Award following the 1978-79 season as the league’s top coach.
He coached 1,500 games with the Islanders and Arbor’s 782 career wins are second only to Scotty Bowman on the all-time list. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996.