Blog | Orange & Blue

The Islanders may not be vying for a Stanley Cup anymore this season, but they are waiting patiently on some notable individual honors. John Tavares is a finalist for the Hart Memorial Trophy as league MVP, and Matt Moulson was recently named a finalist for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, presented to the player “adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”

Moulson, now a two-time finalist for the award, will learn if he is the winner sometime during the Stanley Cup Finals.

In 47 games this year, Moulson recorded just four penalty minutes, yet scored 15 goals and added 29 assists.

Mike Bossy is the only Islanders player to have won the award and earned it three times (82-83, 83-84 and 85-86).

Chicago Blackhawks right wing Patrick Kane and Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Martin St. Louis are also finalists this year.

It’s not strange for the Islanders to trickle their way into pop culture, especially in the 1980s when they were winning Stanley Cups.

In recent years, thanks to actor and Long Island native Kevin Connolly, the Islanders were front and center on the hit HBO show “Entourage.”

Connolly, who grew up in Medford, N.Y., is a devout Islanders fan and often wore team shorts and hats and had paraphernalia hanging in his office on the set.

Last month, however, there was a quick and clever mention of the Islanders on the new FX show, “The Americans.” Focused largely on the interaction of Russian spies during the tenuous, paranoid and stressful Cold War times of the 1980s, the last thing you’d expect was a mention of the boys from Hempstead Turnpike.

As Philip Jennings, the lead actor and Russian spy played by Matthew Rhys, approaches his son in the family living room for a conversation, the boy tells him he’s busy.

“It’s Game 5 of the Stanley Cup and the Islanders just got home,” said Henry Jennings, played by Keidrich Sellati.

The Jennings family lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. with no clear connection to Long Island. The Islanders, however, were so good at the time it was must-see television. They simply did not lose.

The show, in its first season, takes place in 1981 when the Islanders won their second straight Stanley Cup, beating the Minnesota North Stars in five games. And yes, Game 5 was at home at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

For the record, there were no Russians on the Islanders’ roster that season.

By now you know John Tavares is the Most Valuable Player on the Islanders. He has been a major catalyst for the team in the middle of a playoff run against the Penguins in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. On Friday it was officially announced that he is a finalist for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s MVP as well.

“Dougie [Weight] broke the news and it means a lot coming from him,” Tavares said during Friday’s morning practice. “I was a little shocked; a lot of emotion. It’s a tremendous honor to be recognized, especially with those two. They are great players. I’ve gotten a lot of support since I was a kid, and I appreciate everyone who has gotten me here since I first put skates on at 3-years-old.”

This season Tavares, 22, led the Islanders in scoring for the fourth straight year. He scored 28 goals and added 19 assists for 47 points in a shortened year due to the work stoppage.

Tavares was the first overall pick in the 2009 NHL Draft and has recorded 249 points in 291 regular-season games.

In their long and prosperous history, the Islanders have only had one Hart Trophy Winner. Bryan Trottier won the honor in 1978-1979, the season before the Islanders went on to win four straight Stanley Cups.

The other finalists are Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin.

The score read Penguins 4, Islanders 3, and the Islanders were officially eliminated from the playoffs, but the crowd said otherwise.

In a fitting tribute to how far the Islanders have come as an organization in a short amount of time, fans in attendance after the team lost Game 6 in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs cheered as if the team actually won.

The “Lets Go Islanders” chants at the end were as loud as they were around 7:05 p.m. when the opening face-off took place.

Like they did on fan appreciation night, players skated around the ice and raised their sticks to the stands. The Coliseum faithful applauded the work ethic and resurgence of this franchise. The perception has officially begun to change.

“I think they respect the work ethic and the desperation that our guys played with,” said Islanders coach Jack Capuano. “When you look at the Al Arbour teams in the ‘80s, and you look at how those guys won championships, they played with grit, they played with heart, they played with passion, and that’s the brand of hockey we want to play here. And that was our team all year. I think they respect the fact that our guys left it on the ice and gave it everything they had and it was great for our guys to get a response like that.”

Hip-hop and hockey normally don’t mix, but the Islanders entrance song during the post-season was apropos for the surge and journey the franchise took in 2013 towards a playoff run.

“Started from the bottom now we’re here …” is the chorus to Drake’s song of the same title. “Started from the bottom now my whole team’s here.”

Given an insurmountable task as the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference to challenge the top-seeded Pittsburgh Penguins seemed liked a one-sided series to anybody but the Islanders and their fans.

Prior to the shortened 2013 season most media didn’t give the Islanders a chance, but they managed to stay hot for all of April, only losing one game in regulation, and keeping fans at the edge of their seats as the team went up and down the standings and eventually clinched.

In Game 6, the Islanders were the better team. They had more scoring opportunities, hit more and played with a rush that is necessary in the playoffs. It just wasn’t enough.

“You can learn a lot about what it takes to be in the playoffs,” said Islanders star John Tavares, who opened the game’s scoring in the first period. “Hopefully we all understand it’s going to take even more to win a series. It’s tough to take it all in right now. It’s just disappointing. It’s a great group of guys; a character locker room and you can see there’s something coming here.”

Capuano echoed Tavares’ sentiments about the locker room, also using the word character to describe his team.

“We took huge strides as an organization and not many people gave us a chance to get where we got,” he said. “We got to this point because of our leadership, our character and the guys we have in that room and they put it on the line every game we played.”

For those keeping track, the Islanders are scheduled to move out of the Nassau Coliseum after next season and start playing in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center in 2015. Politics, zoning and real estate news aside, the franchise appears headed for Brooklyn no matter what. For the core of young players on this team, they should feel honored and lucky they’ve experienced an adrenaline filled playoff atmosphere in the old barn. It doesn’t get much louder than that.

“Our fan base is loud, motivated us and provided us with a lot of energy,” said Matt Martin, who infused that energy with his massive hits throughout every playoff game. “They were great through the end of the regular season and the playoffs. It’s exciting playing in a building like this, a lot of fun. In my opinion this is probably the loudest building in the league now.”

It always has been, it just took some gritty young kids to wipe away the settled dust and cobwebs.

The team’s off-season task list should be set in stone. General manager Garth Snow will assess the contracts of unrestricted free agent captain Mark Streit and goaltender Evgeni Nabokov. With this playoff run, his team’s image has surely changed, meaning more free agent talent will be interested in wearing the orange and blue.

“Anybody who watched the games saw the crowd and the atmosphere here in the building,” Capuano said. “We have some good players and we can attract some players. They should realize we have a good young core of guys, we have some good veterans and I’m sure we opened some eye from people around the league.”

Somewhere between taunts of “Princess Crosby” and “Fleury,” the Coliseum faithful bellowed “MVP” again during the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.

John Tavares came through with his most clutch career goal yet at 9:49 of the third period of Game 4 to put the Islanders ahead for good over the Penguins, sending 16,170 fans into a frenzy.

Tavares faked twice past a defender, shot once on Marc-Andre Fleury, grabbed his own rebound, and buried a shot that he said is one of the shining moments in his career.

“It’s right up there, that’s for sure,” he said. “I’ve had a great four years and I’m just trying to stay focused on the moment.”

Pumping both fists and howling at the crowd as the goal horn sounded, Tavares was certainly feeling the adulation. It marked the first time the Islanders won a home playoff game since 2002.

The crowd noise and atmosphere continues to be a difference maker. As the Islanders match the Penguins stride for stride, so does the Coliseum walls, bouncing off-the-chart fan volume back onto the ice in a spirited cycle of pandemonium.

“It’s an old building, but this place gets rocking,” said Tavares. “These people are passionate, that’s for sure. Got some great sports fans in New York, especially on Long Island and they care about their Islanders.”

The “MVP” calls should be strong during Game 6 when the Islanders return from Pittsburgh, win or lose. Finishing as one of the top scorers in the NHL during the regular season, Tavares has increasingly been called “elite” by players and coaches both in orange and blue and of the opposition.

His goal to take the lead in the third period has to be considered one of the most clutch post-season goals in Islanders’ modern history. Considering they only made the playoffs a handful of times since the turn of the century, it’s an obvious historic sentiment.

“Johnny’s been our MVP, the league MVP all year,” said Islanders forward Matt Martin. “He’s so talented. He’s out late in practice working on things he needs to work on and that’s what makes him one of the elite.”

“Your best players have to be the best and that’s what Johnny was tonight,” added Islanders coach Jack Capuano.

Quotable … John Tavares on the Isles’ success: “We obviously started doing some good things and just kept building. We started to find the way we needed to play. We got contributions offensive and defensively from everybody down our lineup. We see the success and I think that strives you to want to keep getting better and pushing yourselves. When you see that we can be successful that way, it only makes us better.  It comes from what we’ve done over the last six or seven weeks getting into the playoffs. You put so much effort to get here there was no doubt we wanted to make the most of this opportunity. We believe in this room. We have a lot of character and a lot of guys who are stepping up for us.“