Clark Gillies says Rangers comeback is possible

Barbara Barker

1:49 PM EDT, April 30, 2008

I woke up Wednesday morning wondering if there was any sane person out there not named Tom Renney who believes it is possible for the Rangers to come back from an 0-3 deficit.

By 10 a.m., I had found one: A former Islander, of all people.

"It can be done," said Hall of Famer Clark Gillies. "They are in a tough position. Having to win four in a row is tough in any sport. But I've seen it happen."

Gillies made his comments before news broke that Sean Avery had lacerated his spleen and would be missing Thursday night's game - and the rest of the series. Still, Gillies knows firsthand that no comeback is impossible.

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Only three North American pro teams - the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 1975 Islanders and the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs - have rallied from 0-3 playoff deficits to win a best-of-seven series. Gillies, a young forward on the 1975 Islanders team that came back to win four straight from Pittsburgh, said he watched Renney's postgame press conference Tuesday with interest.

The way Rangers coach Renney defiantly insisted that his team could win the series caused Gillies to recall the talk that Islanders coach Al Arbour gave his team after they had fallen behind, 0-3, to the Penguins. During a practice, Arbour gathered the team by the net.

"He said, 'If there's anyone here who doesn't think we can come back and win, why don't you get your gear and get off the ice. I never want to see you again,' " Gillies recalled.

Though no one left the ice, Gillies admits now he didn't think it was possible at the time to make the comeback.

"We all thought Al was crazy," he said.

Gillies said that the only way to approach a task as daunting as winning four straight is to break it down.

"You win a shift, then a period, then the next period, then a game," he said. "It's cliché, but it's the only way you can look at it."

Gillies and his former Islanders teammates have talked over the years about why they were able to pull off a comeback that no one else has been able to equal in the NHL for more than three decades. He believes one of the biggest reasons is that the team was young and felt like it had nothing to lose, because they had already beaten the Rangers in the first round of the playoffs.

"That was really what mattered most to Islander fans," he said.

He also believes that former Ranger Derek Sanderson inadvertently gave the Islanders an assist when he predicted that the Islanders wouldn't win another game in the playoffs after they beat the Rangers.

"For awhile, he was looking like a genius," he said.

Gillies knows that another team will eventually join them in coming back from 0-3. When asked if, as a former Islander, he would like it to be the Rangers, Gillies laughed.

Said Gillies: "I don't know if they would be the team I would pick."