Boston > NJD 3-0
Devils played without any enthusiasm or drive and only took 14 SOGs.
On a positive note, Mike Cammallieri played his 700th game.
On a sad note, JP Parise of the North Stars and Islanders passed away today at age 74:
RIP (and cheers!) to J.P. Parise, first hero of Islanders dynasty | New York Post
I had the great fortune to break into this business by covering the pre-dynastic Islanders of the mid-’70s, the team that would soon grow to become the best and brightest in NHL history.
This was a simpler time, a less-crowded time, a time when I was about the same age as the players and earning not that all that much less money than a lot of them. It was a time where my first question following a road game invariably had nothing to do with what happened on the ice but rather was: “Where are we going?”
As in, where are we going drinking tonight?
And one of the guys I would ask was J.P. Parise, who died Wednesday night at the age of 73 after a yearlong battle with lung cancer.
This was a time when the walls between players and writers was thin, a time when the beat guys traveled with the team, on the bus to and from the airport, on the bus to and from the game, and a time when players and writers could hang together on the road, with mutual trust and understanding that what happened away from the rink stayed away from the paper and that what happened at the rink would be reported without regard for who bought the last round.
So you got to know players in a way that is simply impossible these days, when walls are erected to separate the athletes from the fourth estate and the idea of writers actually socializing with players for post-game libations is as alien as the concept of a hockey team winning 19 straight playoff rounds.
And so I got to know J.P. Parise.
The trade for Butch Goring is the most celebrated deal in Islanders’ history and rightly so. It was Hockey New York’s version of the Knicks’ deal for Dave DeBusschere. It was the acquisition that created a dynasty.
But Bill Torrey, as great a general manager as we’ve ever had in these parts in any sport, pulled off a mini-Goring five years beforehand, 40 years ago almost to this day — Jan. 5, 1975 — when he got Parise, then 33, from the North Stars for a pair of journeymen called Doug Rombaugh and Ernie Hicke. Two days after that, the Islanders stole Jude Drouin from Minnesota also, for a fellow named Craig Cameron.
That, my friends, is when the Islanders became somebody. That is when the Islanders became a contender. That — before Trottier, before Bossy, before Tonelli, before the Sutters — is when the Islanders learned how to win. That is what Parise, tough and mean and gritty, the Parise who was in the middle of that mini-riot in Game 8 in Moscow in the ’72 Summit Series when he feigned swinging his stick at an official, meant to the evolution of the franchise.
And then, three months after Parise came to the Island, there was this: 0:11.
Islanders fans and Rangers fans know 0:11, they know 0:11 of overtime, and they know it like their own respective social security numbers.
It was at 0:11 of overtime in the decisive Game 3 of the first round of the 1975 playoffs at the Garden that Parise took a centering pass from — who else? — Drouin to beat Ed Giacomin and give the Islanders their first series victory in the franchise’s three-year history.
It was the beginning of everything for the Islanders and it was the end of everything as we had known it for the Rangers, who before the end of the calendar year waived Giacomin, traded Brad Park and Jean Ratelle, and fired Emile Francis.
So much of the upheaval because of the goal scored by Parise.
At 0:11.
The Islanders would trade Parise before they’d win a Cup. Torrey sent the left wing, heavy-legged by then, to a team called the Cleveland Barons on Jan. 10, 1978 in exchange for young Wayne Merrick, who was supposed to become the second-line center the Islanders coveted. Jean Potvin went in the trade also.
It did and it didn’t quite work out. Merrick never truly blossomed, but he was a regular on each of the four Cup championship teams while Parise would retire after one more season.
Somehow, Parise was an Islander for only three years. But he was a cornerstone, an essential building block for the greatest of hockey teams. He had character, on and off the ice, and it rubbed off on everyone.
I was in my blue seat in Section 419, right behind the net, not yet a part of this business when Parise scored that fateful goal. Two years later I’d be asking him where we’d be going out, and I’d spend time with J.P. and his wife, Donna, and a few decades after that I would have the pleasure of knowing their son Zach Parise, a chip off the old block.
The best part of this gig isn’t getting to go the games, it’s the people you get to know along the way. And I can tell you that they didn’t come any better than J.P. Parise.
Rest in peace, Jeep.
True, he was well liked for being a great player. But it is his legacy as a great human being that will be cherished even more so.
