Public enemy No. 91 returns to scene of prime
The last time a Maple Leaf arrived in Long Island as public enemy No. 1, some of the players’ sticks were still made of wood and the NHL still traded in face-punching hate.
The object of hate of the moment in question was Darcy Tucker, the on-ice disturber still beloved in Toronto. This was in December of 2002, the season after a memorably heated playoff series between the Maple Leafs and Islanders wherein Tucker’s infamous low hit on New York captain Michael Peca knocked Peca out of the playoffs and onto an operating table for off-season knee surgery.
If there’s one thing that still stands out in the memory of that era, it’s that Islanders fans were especially good at being bad-blooded. These were the folks who, during the playoffs, brazenly booed “O Canada” and burned Canadi- an flags outside the arena. When the Maple Leafs returned months later for a much-hyped regular-season meeting between the teams, these were the folks who booed Tucker lustily as they hung him in effigy.
More than 16 years later, these are also the folks, or their welltaught descendants, who’ll greet John Tavares’s return to Nassau County Coliseum on Thursday night with what’s expected to be, to put it kindly, a reaction befitting the fan base’s traditionally passionate standards.
Exactly how the evening will proceed is anyone’s guess. But surely there’ll be boos. There’ve already been plenty of indicators that the resentment remains real around Tavares’s July 1 decision to leave the Islanders after nine seasons and sign a seven-year, free-agent contract with the Maple Leafs. New York fans have already been coming to Islanders games in modified No. 91 sweaters, replacing the “Tavares” nameplate with “Traitor” or “Snake.” A video produced by a local TV station, wherein
members of an Islanders booster club vented their lingering rage at Tavares’s departure, went viral on social media this week.
Tavares, for his part, has clearly been bracing for this moment for some time.
“I really embraced being an Islander … I gave it everything I had,” Tavares said this week. “I’m not trying to overthink it. I just try and go out there and be myself and play and help the Maple Leafs.”
Perhaps some of the crowd’s potential vitriol will be reined in by the measured assessments of Tavares’s departure put forth this week by the Islanders’ brain trust.
“(Tavares) had every right to make the decision that he did to gom and to go to free agency, and I respect that,” Lou Lamoriello, the former Leafs general manager who’s now the Islanders’ president and GM, told WFAN. “Let’s put it this way: I hope (Thursday’s crowd reaction is) rethought. I hope it’s the respect he should be getting.”
Said Islanders coach Barry Trotz: “John was the face of the franchise for a long time and he’s earned the right as a free agent — it’s no different than anybody in any walk of life. You earn the right to move on. I did it in Washington; John did it here.”
Still, as much as it’s easy to speak in a detached monotone and repeat the old free-agent cliche — “It’s a business,” etcetera — even a hard-boiled hockey lifer has to acknowledge that Thursday’s game is something more than one of 82. Leafs coach Mike Babcock, asked about the prospect of Tavares’s New York return the other day, acknowledged it figures to be “emotional” for Tavares. Trotz, speaking to reporters in Long Island Wednesday, used the same word.
“Obviously it’ll be an emotional night for, probably, John and for a lot of people who have been on the Island for a while and Islanders fans,” Trotz said.
Still, given that the Islanders are in the midst of an amazing renaissance season that’s seen the franchise go from the NHL’s worst defensive team to its best as measured by goals against per game, Trotz said he’d be careful to point out to his players not to allow the crowd’s energy to fuel the visiting team.
“Toronto’s probably rallying around John right now, knowing how important it is to John coming back here. They’re using that as a motivating factor,” Trotz said. “We’ve got to make sure our motivating factor is getting the two points.”
Toronto sports fans know all about the dangers of showering a departed player with in-arena hate. Months after former Raptors star Vince Carter forced his way out of town in a trade back in 2004, the man they called Vinsanity, upon his return as a member of the New Jersey Nets, was met with vicious boos and fans wearing baby bibs bearing Carter’s No. 15. Carter, seemingly fuelled by the disdain, scored a masterful 39 points in a New Jersey win.
There’ve been reports that some Islanders fans are planning to come to Thursday’s game wearing pyjamas — a mocking riff on Tavares’s freeagent day social-media post of a school-aged picture of him sleeping in Maple Leafs bedsheets.
“Whatever reception I get, I’m just going to try to go out there and play,” Tavares said this week.
“Try” might be the operative word. Back in 2002, when Tucker arrived as the target of Long Island’s scorn, the evening didn’t go optimally. Leafs coach Pat Quinn kept Tucker on the bench for much of the game, playing him a little more than eight minutes. The strategy, Quinn said later, was to keep the crowd out of the proceedings.
“But it didn’t work,” Quinn said. “As much as you’d like to prepare against it and think you’re mentally tough, we didn’t deal with it very well.”
The crowd was loud at times. The game was a letdown all around. The Leafs lost 4-2. Tucker, a non-factor as the centre of attention, expressed his relief that the much-hyped rematch was finally in the books.
“The last few weeks have not been very much fun with all the people following us around with it and asking the stupidest questions you can ask,” Tucker said. “I think it was ridiculous.”
Given that Long Island’s ridiculousness looks as though it’s alive and well, let’s see how public enemy No. 91 fares in the crosshairs.