From an earlier Ice Age
Albert-Trotz friendship traces to minor league team in the early ’90s
Kenny Albert had to admit the moment got to him. The NBC and MSG Network Rangers announcer was watching his longtime friend achieve a life-long dream. “When I was calling the Stanley Cup on the radio for Westwood One, not that you ever root for a team, but when I saw Barry hold the Stanley Cup over his head, I got a little emotional at that point,” Albert said. “Then seeing Barry [Trotz] and his family on the ice afterwards, I was just thinking back to 29 years ago when we first met and spent all that time together.” What followed for Trotz was a whirlwind two weeks when he went from Capitals’ Stanley Cup coach to unemployed and then quickly to the Islanders’ bench. Albert and Trotz are now a borough apart after a friendship started nearly three decades ago when one was an assistant on the Baltimore Skipjacks minor league team and the other a rookie announcer. “Right from the start he was such a nice, personable guy, a regular guy,” Albert, 51, said of his one-time roommate. “Even now that he’s had all this success he’s had: 800 wins, Stanley Cup, he is still in my opinion one of the more down-to-earth among professional people in pro sports. “He’s never really changed. He’s a great family guy and just a terrific person. Those two years, a lot of memories, he likes to bring some of them up whenever I bump into him.”
That includes last Thursday when Trotz recalled the time he had Albert “arrested” as a practical joke in Nova Scotia in 1991 as revenge for Albert playing the tape of an embarrassing slip of the tongue by Trotz to the Skipjacks players.
“He still gets a kick out of it, as I do as well,” Albert said before launching into the frightening faux ordeal that involved 15 minutes of questioning and a ride in a cop car.
The chances for the two to bump into each other have surprisingly continued this postseason. Trotz and Islanders president Lou Lamoriello put championship pedigrees on top of the beleaguered franchise, but this felt like a rebuilding season after John Tavares left in free agency for the Maple Leafs.
Instead, Trotz has them in the Eastern Conference semifinals and a possible matchup against the Capitals.
Albert called the first three games of the Islanders-Penguins series, and as the playby-play man on the NBC’s No. 2 broadcast team, there is the potential for many more run-ins as the postseason goes on. The two have tried to get together beyond the rink, but the schedules for a broadcaster and a coach are unwieldy as you would imagine them to be.
“The only time I saw him was at the morning skates and practices when the Islanders played the Rangers and now in the playoffs,” Albert said. “We did make a plan to get together with the wives, but it’s going to have to be in the offseason.”
Albert’s offseason was always going to start after calling the Stanley Cup on the radio. Trotz just might be there with him again.