May 24, 1980: The First Cup

On May 24, 1980, the New York Islanders captured their first Stanley Cup by defeating the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-4, in overtime.

Here are the highlights of the game:

Here’s a longer treatment of the entire contest:

My favorite moment has to be obvious, right?

CBS picked up the right to televise this game at the last moment, and moved it to an afternoon start. In Madison, Wisconsin, I did not know this, and I was lucky to be flipping channels when the pregame show appeared. The previous games had been aired on delay (this was true of previous series as well), and it had been a challenge to follow the Islanders until the got to the finals.

Bryan Trottier won the Conn Smythe, and deservedly so. His 29 points broke Phil Esposito’s single playoff season scoring record, and it was his two assists in this game that allowed him to pass Esposito.

The series began with an Islanders’ win in Philadelphia in overtime on a goal by Denis Potvin, which was just as well, because earlier he had knocked a puck into his own net. The Flyers won Game 2, but the Islanders (and Trottier) dominated in Games 3 and 4 on Long Island, due in part to a lethal power play. A Flyer triumph in Game 5 returned the series to the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, with the Islanders and their fans wondering whether the New Yorkers would choke away their first chance at a Stanley Cup (New York papers talked about this being the first Cup in 40 years, but that 1940 Cup belonged to the New York Rangers, something Islanders fans reminded Ranger fans until 1994).

The Islanders took the lead in the first period on two disputed goals: one came off a not-that-high stick of Denis Potvin, while Duane Sutter’s goal should never have counted, as the passing play that generated it was offside.  The Isles took a 4-2 lead in the second (with one of the goals being scored by Bob Nystrom, who had first joined the club in 1972), but the Flyers tied it up in the third, leading to overtime.

Then it happened at 7:11. The Flyers, under pressure in part because of some tough checking by Nystrom, three the puck up the near boards. Defenseman Stefan Persson stopped the puck, then left it for center Lorne Henning, who was cycling back in neutral ice. Henning spotted left winger John Tonell cutting across the zone and hit him with a pass just as Tonell charged toward the blue line. Cross-crossing behind him was Nystrom.  Only Bob Dailey was back for the Flyers to protect rookie netminder Pete Peeters.

Tonelli pulled up slightly and fed a forehand pass to Nystrom. The right winger had a fairly serious curve on his stick, and was not known for his backhand. However, this time he stuck out his stick, jabbing at the puck. The puck hit the backhand, and deflected in past a sliding Peeters.

 

I, for one, was jumping all over the place ecstatic yelling like crazy quite pleased.

How did other fans experience it?

And then there it was on the ice:

The Islanders win the Stanley Cup.

 

For highlights of the entire series, go here:

The Islanders’ triumph even made Saturday Night Live:

 

Your Turn: Three Confederates at Gettysburg

 

I’ve been asked to write something about the above image. I have my own thoughts about it, and I have some idea what I’m going to say. However, I’m curious … what do you think about this image? What thoughts stir in your mind?

Yes, I know about the background of the image and what’s been said and written about it. So try to go beyond that. Thanks.

Grant at Vicksburg

From the Library of America’s blog.

May 22, 1863: Grant’s Second Assault at Vicksburg

On May 22, 1863, three days after his men assaulted the Confederate lines outside Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant made a second attempt to bring the siege of the Mississippi river citadel to an early end.

The attempt failed, and badly. There’s much debate about how much effort William T. Sherman put into his assault, and even more about John A. McClernand’s request for reinforcement so that he could secure the toehold he had reportedly gained.

Before long it settled down to this:

Sherman’s men had been far more visible in the May 19th assault, commemorated by the United States Army in this image:

Note the different ways in which combat is portrayed. Yet it is also telling to note that there are common themes, especially when it comes to representing the impact of shot, shell, sword, and bayonet upon the human body.

I’ve visited Vicksburg several times, and it is remarkable to see the ground which these men charged across. I highly recommend a visit.

May 22, 1856: Preston Brooks Assaults Charles Sumner

I’m sure many of you have seen this illustration, in which the featureless Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina, batters Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. The image, indeed, presents Brooks as whipping Sumner, much like a slaveholder or overseer whips a slave.

Some other contemporary images prove revealing in different ways.

Then there’s this … and the speech in print …with the cane itself (at the Old State House in Boston: somehow I’ve missed it):

And this:

as well as this:

Coming days after the sack of Lawrence, Kansas, the beating of Sumner (and the support Brooks received for his act) reminded white northerners of the violence with which some white southerners sought to resolve political differences.

It is well to remember that while nothing can excuse Brooks’s act, Sumner’s speech mocked Brooks’s kinsman, South Carolina senator Andrew Butler, and that Sumner had memorized his insults as he rehearsed the speech in front of a mirror.  Indeed, although many people will speak glowingly of Sumner’s commitment to civil rights, he had a way about him that irritated others, notably Ulysses S. Grant. Once told that Sumner did not believe in the Bible, Grant replied: “That’s because he didn’t write it”; asked whether he had ever conversed with Sumner, Grant replied: “No, but I have heard him lecture.”

Indeed, Sumner could be as insufferable as he was committed to equality for all. It took Preston Brooks to make him a sympathetic figure.

Still, I know some folks who live in the world of Preston Brooks and keep his spirit of conflict resolution alive. For them I have these two images:

Now Pittsburgh Has to Win …

… or we risk this:

Coming to a Theater Near You …

You wish. Some do.

May 21, 1981: The Second Cup

On May 21, 1981, the New York Islanders repeated as Stanley Cup champions when they defeated the Minnesota North Stars, 5-1.

There’s no neat highlights package available. For the full game, here you go:

I have two favorite moments from that finals series. The second occurs at 50:00 on the game tape: Bryan Trottier’s assist meant that he recorded a point (a goal or an assist) in each game of that year’s playoffs, part of a 27-game postseason point streak over three years that remains an NHL record.

The first moment happened in Game One. In the first period, with the Islanders up 1-0, New York forward Bob Bourne received a five minute major, meaning that Minnesota could score as many times as it wanted to within that five minutes without terminating the power play. Instead, Trottier scored one goal and set up another shorthanded tally.  3-0, Islanders, at the end of one period en route to a 6-3 victory.

Give the North Stars credit. They were the only team to beat the Islanders in the Stanley Cup finals between 1981 and 1983. Unfortunately for them, they did this only one time, and it takes four wins to claim the Cup.

Butch Goring won the Conn Smythe as the playoff MVP. I would have awarded it to Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, or the man whose contributions to the four Cups seems to me to be underappreciated: Denis Potvin. Simply put, Potvin was an offensive powerhouse who sacrificed some of that individual glory for team success, and yet during his playoff he was deadly on the Islanders power play. Nothing against Goring, but sometimes the Conn Smythe tends to concentrate on play in the finals alone.

That said, Goring had one heck of a helmet:

It was a playoff year where the Islanders dealt with ghosts of upsets past, sweeping the Toronto Maple Leafs in the opening round, dropping two games to the upstart Edmonton Oilers, and then sweeping the dreaded rival New York Rangers before taking Minnesota in five games.

By the end of the final contest, Denis Potvin’s leg had given way, and Trottier was skating with a separated shoulder. However, it seems they were able to carry the Stanley Cup around the ice:

Someone couldn’t spell “Islanders,” by the way:

They say that the hardest thing is not winning a championship, but repeating as champion. The Islanders seemed equal to that challenge more often than not in the early 1980s.

Forty Year Reunion: Bruins Versus Rangers

Before I was an Islanders fan, I was a Rangers fan.

That’s because there were no New York Islanders before 1972.

My New York Rangers were the team of close but not enough. Between 1971 and 1974, they looked championship ready, but every time someone stopped the Broadway Blueshirts. In 1971 they finally won a playoff series against Toronto, only to lose in seven games to the Chicago Blackhawks. In 1971 they beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens and swept the Blackhawks, only to lose to the Boston Bruins in the finals. In 1973 they beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Bruins, only to lose to Chicago once more. In 1974 they beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Canadiens, only to lose to Philadelphia, who then went on the beat the Bruins for the Cup.

In other words, for three straight years the Rangers knocked off the defending champions. In beating out Montreal for the final playoff spot in 1970, they blocked the Canadiens from attempting to win a third straight Cup.

These Rangers were loaded with Hall of Fame talent in Rod Gilbert, Brad Park, Jean Ratelle, and Ed Giacomin. I met Gilbert and Park one summer when I attended their hockey camp, and Gilbert liked the fact that I wore his number seven on my skates. The following year Gilbert and Park joined Team Canada in the Summit Series against the Soviet Union, and I had to make do with folks like Rogie Vachon (Rogie was terrific, and wore white goalie skates that made him look like a small polar bear) and Gilles Villemure (who also rode in harness racing).

Although one could target the Blackhawks as the greatest obstacle to championship greatness, the Rangers’ biggest rivals were the Boston Bruins, who had a few players that people remember, led by a guy named Bobby Orr, with Phil Esposito, John Bucyk, Ken Hodge, Wayne Cashman, Gerry Cheevers … enough already. For every Walt Tkaczuk, there was a Fred Stanfield; for every Jim Neilson and Rod Seiling, there was a Don Awrey and Dallas Smith. If Gilbert was New York’s playboy, Derek Sanderson (as in Derek Sanderson Jeter) was Beantown’s response. Vic Hadfield could fight and shoot, but so could John McKenzie. And yes, those teams liked to fight.

The Rangers and Bruins met three times in four years. In 1970 the two teams fought through an opening round of six games, with the Bruins prevailing. Game Three that year was a classic donnybrook:

Here’s newly-acquired Ranger Tim Horton joining in the fun:

The following year, a rookie goaltender named Ken Dryden held off the Bruins, but the Rangers fell one game short of making the finals: in 1972, however, after both teams had magnificent regular seasons and dominated the NHL All Star selections, they faced off in the finals, and the Bruins prevailed once again, causing a first-year student at the Phillips Exeter Academy much heartache as a Rangers fan in Bruins territory. Revenge came in 1973, when the Rangers prevailed in surprisingly easy fashion. Yes, Phil Esposito went down with an injury, but the same fate had befallen Ratelle the previous year, possibly costing him the scoring championship.

During those years, Orr and Park had a rivalry that was akin to Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, although Park fell a little short. Gilbert and Ratelle were finesse and speed, while Esposito and Hodge were brute force and banging home loose pucks.

The two teams simply brought something out in the other. Orr and Park not only defended against each other, but they fought. So did Gilbert and Sanderson in the final game of the series, a game better remembered because of Orr’s performance. At the end of that contest Bruins captain John Bucyk lifted the Stanley Cup … and, realizing he was in New York, hurried off the ice after a short skate.

It would never be quite the same after that. Both teams lost players over the next few years to retirement, the rival World Hockey Association, and trades; in November 1975 the teams traded stars, with Esposito and Carol Vadnais coming to New York in exchange for Park, Ratelle, and unknown Joe Zanuzzi. By that time I was an Islanders fan in any case, and during the Isles’ Stanley Cup run they beat the Rangers three times and Boston twice.

Still, those Bruins-Rangers clashes were classic.  It took me a long time to admire Orr, and even longer to give Esposito some respect (I feel the same way about Mark Messier), although Espo’s performance versus the Russians helped a lot. It was not fun when aging Bruins made their way to New York (Hodge and Cashman stand out, along with Sanderson), much as old Edmonton OIlers would suit up as Rangers, but with far better results. Meanwhile, I followed Park and Ratelle with their new team, and in any case the Bruins of the late 1970s and early 1980s were a different bunch.

This year’s series has nothing on what once was.

The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It

Just so you know, earlier this month the Library of America formally released the third volume in its four-volume series on the American Civil War. I was fortunate enough to be the co-editor on the first volume, with Stephen W. Sears (who handled volume two) and Aaron Sheehan-Dean (who will edit volume four). leaving me to edit the third volume.

The real challenge in doing such a book is that you know you will leave out things that you would like to include. That’s just the way it is. At the same time, I chose whenever possible to take contemporary descriptions over postwar reflections, because I wanted to capture something of the immediacy of the event (although in a few cases this was not possible). Another volume could cover how participants remembered the war, but I think that volume would have a different flavor. It’s more telling to me how people saw things when they did not know how the story would turn out.

The volume covers the early weeks of January 1863 (with Burnside’s Mud March) to the beginning of March 1864 (with Grant departing his army to go to Washington). As you might suspect, there’s plenty of battle coverage, but there’s also an effort to make sure that other voices are represented. I’m sure other people might do things differently. Just remember … for every choice you would make, you would have to exclude something else.