Loss of another franchise hero weighs on Islanders fans
Fans leave flowers by the Hall of Fame Mike Bossy plaque at UBS Arena on Tuesday, April 19, 2022 to honor the New York Islanders legend. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The New York Islanders Hall of Fame plaques on prominent display at UBS Arena were intended as a celebration, not a memorial.
But here we are.
“This is messed up,” one fan said as he took off his cap out of respect in front of the wall of Islanders legends before Tuesday night’s game against the Panthers.
“Two months ago, the flowers were over there.”
On this night, the flowers framed the plaque honoring Mike Bossy, who died last week. Three plaques to the right was Clark Gillies, who died in January.
Jean Potvin, a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Islanders who died in March, is the brother of Denis Potvin, another member of the Hall of Fame.
This is not normal.
General manager Bill Torrey and coach Al Arbour, the only men with honorary plaques who were gone before UBS opened in November, were in their 80s when they died last decade, and Arbour had been in poor health for some time.
But the Islanders barely are old enough as a franchise to have very old former players to mourn. Bossy was 65. Gillies was 67.
That helped make the recent losses even more painful. All it took was a glance at the rafters to illustrate the devastation.
The jerseys of Gillies, Bryan Trottier and Bossy come one after the other in the order of retired numbers, which happen to be in the order in which they lined up together, left to right: No. 9, No. 19, No. 22.
Now, only one remains with us.
Considering Bossy last played in the NHL in 1987, there were an impressive number of replica No. 22 jerseys in the arena on a night on which the Islanders memorialized their greatest goal-scorer with an eight-minute pregame tribute.
Rachel Grassa, 61, of Island Park, wore a more recent No. 11 Zach Parise jersey as she placed flowers on the growing pile in front of Bossy’s plaque.
Initially, she declined to be interviewed because the experience had been too emotional, but she eventually agreed.
“It’s very painful, very painful,” she said. “He’s somebody we grew up with. He’s a legend, and a nice guy.”
Asked why it was important for her to leave flowers, she said, “We didn’t get a chance to do it for Clark Gillies, and that made me very sad. I wanted to show the family that we care, that we ARE family.”
Grassa was with Stacy Salomides, 51, of Island Park, who added, “He’s a legend. He’s an All-Star. He’s just the genuine [example] of what an Islander is. You talk to anybody, ask them about the New York Islanders, and they’ll know who Mike Bossy is.
“That’s how much he meant to every fan, whether you are a season-ticket holder or a fly-by-night, just-became-a-fan.”
Bossy was young enough when he died to have many fans who watched him play, and old enough to be mostly an image in grainy video to many others.
Either way, it was a night to pay tribute, and fans came through, reviving an old chant of “Bos-sy, “Bos-sy” in an arena where Bossy never played.
“I just wanted to thank him for the memories he gave us and all the other Islander fans back in the ‘80s,” said Ian Papierno, 50, of Douglaston, who visited the Hall of Fame display with his son, Matthew.
“He was the cornerstone. If he didn’t have the back injuries, who knows the number of goals he might have scored?”
Papierno noted what an awful season it has been for the Islanders, on and off the ice. He said the only saving grace was the opening of gleaming new UBS Arena.
“Hopefully next year maybe [Bossy] will be looking down on us, him and Clark, and maybe we’ll do better than this season,” Papierno said.
Salomides said she hoped the bonds – and successes – of the early ’80s Islanders would rub off on the current generation.
“My heart bleeds for Bryan, his old friend,” she said of Bossy and Trottier. “I’m sure it’s terrible what he’s going through.
“But when you hear him talk about the way they played together, and the type of player Bossy was, you kind of hope that it ignites the players of today to say, 'hey, you need that.' That’s a team.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
