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1983 New York Islanders

One Last Stanley Cup For The Vets Of The 1983 New York Islanders

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The 1983 New York Islanders were no longer a dominant team, like they had been so often their run of three straight Stanley Cups from 1980-82. But the Isles were plenty good enough in the regular season and they were still great when it counted, winning a fourth straight Stanley Cup.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
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New York slipped into the lower half of the league in terms of offensive prowess. They still had a great scorer in Mike Bossy, whose 60 goals were third-best in the league and he was a 1st-team All-Star. The Isles also had center Bryan Trottier, with 34 goals/55 assists and 31-goal scorer John Tonelli. But there wasn’t depth to the attack and the Islanders ranked 15th in a 21-team league in scoring goals.

It was defense that kept the Isles rolling. They were the best in the league and had two premier goalies. The veteran Billy Smith and the youthful Roland Melanson split time and each finished in the top five among goalies in their Goals Against Average.

New York was sluggish out of the gate, with a 19-15-7 record at the New Year, but a 10-2-2 run in January got them in track. They closed the season with a 14-4-1 record over the last nineteen games and the final regular season mark was 42-26-12.

It was a good record and they had good momentum, but the Islanders were looking up at the Philadelphia Flyers in the Patrick Division, they were fourth in the Wales Conference (the East) and tied for seventh in the NHL overall. The rest of the league was smelling a chance to end the dynasty.

The playoff format took four teams from each division, and they played a divisional playoff to pair it down to the conference finals and ultimately the Stanley Cup Finals. The Islanders met the Washington Capitals in the Patrick Division semifinals, then a best-of-five round.

Washington had three 30-goal scorers, Dennis Maruk, Mike Gartner and Bob Carpenter, along with the fifth-best defense in the NHL. They stole a win in Nassau Coliseum, getting Game 2 by a 4-2 count after the Isles had won the opener 5-2. When the series went to the Beltway, the Islander offense heated up with wins of 6-2 and 6-3 to close it out.

New York then got a break, when Philadelphia was upset in three straight by the New York Rangers. A .500 team, the Rangers most notable talent was second-year head coach Herb Brooks, who had led the “Miracle On Ice” 1980 U.S. Olympic team to the gold medal.

When the Islander defense was in shutdown mode for 4-1 and 5-0 victories to open the series, it looked their Big Apple rival would be roadkill. But the Rangers rallied when the series shifted to Madison Square Garden and exploded offensively in a 7-6 win to take Game 3. Then they showed they could win a defensive fight, with a 3-1 win that knotted the series at two games apiece.

The Isles finally asserted themselves in the back end of the Patrick Division Finals. They unleashed at home for a 7-2 win, and then took Game 6 in the Garden by a 5-2 count.

There would be no more bracket breaks the rest of the way. In the Wales Conference Finals, New York had to meet the Boston Bruins, winners of the President’s Trophy for best regular-season record.

The Bruins had the second-best defense in the NHL, right behind the Isles, with an excellent young goaltender in Pete Peeters. They had the fifth-best offense, led by All-Rookie center Barry Pederson, with his 46 goals and 61 assists. The offense had depth, with Rick Middleton, Keith Crowder and Peter McNab. And a brilliant young defenseman named Ray Borque was already an established star at age 22.

New York came into Boston Garden and grabbed the series opener 5-2 before Boston won Game 2 by a 4-1 count. It was the middle games at Nassau that the Islanders took it over. Their subpar offense wasn’t supposed to go crazy against a top goalie and overall team defense, but the Islanders won Games 3 & 4 by scores and 7-3 and 8-3. Even though the dropped Game 5 back in Boston, New York came home and closed it out with one more offensive outburst, 8-4.

In front of their home fans, the Islanders had scored 23 goals in three games against an elite defense. That’s called taking over at playoff time.

There was one more big hurdle and it was the rising force out of the Campbell Conference (the West). Wayne Gretzky had been MVP of the NHL every year since breaking in at age 18 in 1980. His Edmonton Oilers, with the best record in the West, looked ready to finally claim their first championship.

Gretzky’s 71 goals led the league. Mark Messier, Glenn Andersen and Jari Kurri were all 40-plus goal scorers and defenseman Paul Coffey was a brilliant passer with 67 assists.

It set up an offense vs. defense battle. Edmonton had the best offense in the NHL, but a middling defense and goaltending situation. The games that followed established this lesson—when you have a choice between a veteran team that plays defense and a rising young team with an explosive offense and great player, go ahead and bet on the vets who can play D.

The “time for veterans” theme had been established right from the start of the playoffs for New York when they went almost exclusively with the 32-year-old Smith in goal. And when he hung a 2-0 shutout on the mighty Gretzky in Game 1 the tone for the Stanley Cup Finals was established.

New York consistently slowed the game down, controlled the pace and never let Edmonton get unleashed. The Islanders took Game 2 by a 6-3 count. They came home and won the middle games 5-1 and 4-2. Smith won the Conn Smythe Award, as MVP of the entire postseason.

Edmonton would get its day on the sun—quite a few of them in fact, and starting next year. But the great veterans of the 1983 New York Islanders basked in glory one more time with another Stanley Cup.

Two Dynasties Cross Paths At The 1983 Stanley Cup Finals

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The New York Islanders had won the previous three Stanley Cups. The Edmonton Oilers had been building toward their own with Wayne Gretzky breaking into the NHL the year the Islander reign began, and winning the Hart Trophy, as league MVP, all three seasons. It was one team that was already a dynasty and another poised to become one. The 1983 Stanley Cup Finals would mark the moment when the crossed paths.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 

When observed from the perspective of history, the 1983 Stanley Cup Finals matchup looks almost inevitable, but the regular season didn’t play out that way. The Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers each had better records, and New York’s offense slipped to mediocrity, as Bryan Trottier’s goal-scoring dropped and no one else could help prolific Mike Bossy keep up. But the Isles still had a great goalie in Billy Smith and their path was cleared when Philadelphia was upset in the first round.

New York beat the Washington Capitals, the crosstown Rangers and then unleashed all their pent-up power against Boston in the conference finals. The once-quiet offense scored eight goals twice and seven on another occasion in winning the series in six games.

Gretzky scored 71 goals, handed out 125 assists and won his fourth MVP in as many seasons. Mark Messier, Glen Anderson and Jari Kurri joined Gretzky to form the league’s best offense. They blasted through the playoffs with an 11-1 record against Winnipeg, Calgary and a Chicago Blackhawks team that had finished within two points of the Oilers in the regular season, but was mismatched in the conference finals.

The 1983 Stanley Cup Finals promised drama, but New York showed Edmonton that the veterans still had it. Smith and the defense held Edmonton to 1.5 goals per game, and the Islanders won in a sweep. It was the fourth straight Stanley Cup, and in another historical oddity marked the second straight instance of an NHL dynasty winning four straight—the Montreal Canadiens had won each year from 1976-79 before the Isles picked up the torch in 1980.

1983 was the last great hurrah of the New York dynasty, and the first big breakthrough for a soon-to-be Edmonton dynasty. What the Finals lacked in drama, they made up for as that rare historical benchmark when dynasties cross.

1983 Sports: Two College Upsets & NHL Dynasties Cross In The Night

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College sports, football and basketball, had historic years to lead the way in 1983 sports. Both produced stunning upsets in championship games and each had a lasting historical legacy.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 


We can start with the January 1984 Orange Bowl, where Nebraska came in heavily favored and ready to solidify its place as not just national champion, but one of the all-time great teams. Miami was still an up-and-coming program at this point in their history, and the Hurricanes pulled a stunning 31-30 upset.
The Final Four had been no less dramatic. Jim Valvano’s N.C. State team had pulled out multiple miracle finishes to get to the national championship game, and Valvano pulled one more rabbit out of his hat in upsetting heavily favored Houston 54-52 to steal a title of his own.
Miami’s victory became an obvious historical benchmark in the sea change of college football toward the state of Florida. The sleeping giant, that had traditionally watched other schools raid them for recruits, had started keeping players at home. Miami, along with Florida State and Florida would transform the landscape of the sport.
N.C. State’s upset was the fulfillment of nine years of the NCAA Tournament being a time for favorites to win, to being “March Madness.” Recent seasons had produced surprise Final Four teams and even entire regionals torn apart by upsets. But the ultimate national champion had always been a highly seeded team—until 1983.
Read more about the 1984 Orange Bowl
Read more about 1983 N.C. State basketball
College football and college basketball weren’t done—each had compelling subplots to their dramatic main narratives. On the football side, the Texas Longhorns produced a defense that was at least as good as Nebraska’s offense and if this had happened in 1994 or later, the two teams would have met in a national championship battle.
They didn’t, and Texas went to the Cotton Bowl to play Georgia. Something often forgotten about Miami’s rise is that if Texas doesn’t fumble a punt late in the fourth quarter, and turn a 9-3 lead into a crushing 10-9 loss, the Hurricane upset becomes noteworthy in that it gives unbeaten UT a national title.
Also forgotten in the 1983 narrative is that Auburn got robbed. The Tigers went 10-1, as did Miami, and won their bowl game as did Miami. While the Hurricanes’ victory was considerably more dramatic and against a much better opponent (Auburn beat Big Ten runner-up Michigan in the Sugar Bowl), Auburn had played eight bowl teams to Miami’s one during the regular season. There was no comparison in the body of work and the Tigers should have been voted national champions.
The NCAA Tournament’s Mideast Regional didn’t produce the national champ or even a finalist, but when you combine the quality of the games, the fierceness of the rivals and the locale, it made it arguably the best regional ever, at least the Sweet 16 and regional final rounds.
Louisville, Kentucky, Indiana and Arkansas all converged on Knoxville. That’s a lot of tradition, a lot of passion and a lot of fans in reasonable travel distance of the site. All three games were good, and Louisville-Kentucky in the final was a great overtime battle that had even more juice, given that UK refused to play Louisville at this time.
Read more about the 1983 Mideast Regional (and other top regionals in NCAA Tournament lore)
The Stanley Cup Finals and the Super Bowl each offered compelling matchups between teams that had been circling each other.
In hockey, the New York Islanders had won three straight Stanley Cups, while the Edmonton Oilers of Wayne Gretzky were steadily rising, but a playoff upset the prior year kept them from their showdown with the Isles.
In the NFL, the Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Raiders were each the #1 seeds in their respective conferences in 1982, but it was the Raiders who were upset in the playoffs. In 1983, both teams again got the 1-seeds, and this time they both cashed it in.
Neither championship event lived up to the drama—the Islanders won in a sweep, while the Raiders won 38-9.
The NFL’s 1983 rookie quarterback class–notably John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly–is correctly remembered as the greatest QB class in history. What’s less remembered is that one team, with an undrafted quarterback and built around the running game upended two of these quarterbacks in the postseason. The Seattle Seahaws beat Elway and Marino in succession before losing to the Raiders in the AFC Championship Game.
Read more about the 1983 Stanley Cup Finals
Read more about the Redskins-Raiders Super Bowl
Read more about the 1983 Seattle Seahawks

And finally, two veteran teams that had been knocking on the championship door finally kicked the door down in 1983.
The Philadelphia 76ers had lost the NBA Finals in 1977, 1980 and 1982, and dropped a crushing Eastern Conference Finals in 1981. The Baltimore Orioles lost a heartbreaking World Series in 1979, and tough pennant races in both 1980 and 1982. Both the 76ers and Orioles got their due in 1983.
1983 Philadelphia 76ers
1983 Baltimore Orioles