There’s no place like home. Just ask the Islanders.
“Our goal was to wake up in the morning and be in first place,” Isles head coach Peter Laviolette said after his team beat Toronto, 3-1, Friday night.
Consider that goal accomplished, as the Islanders continued their seven-game homestand last night against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim looking to build on their sparkling 6-1-1-1 record on the Island.
Part of the Islanders’ success at the building once known as Fort Neverlose during the team’s glory years in the early 1980s was the passion that their fans brought to Nassau Coliseum night after night.
This season, the Islanders have an advertising campaign that simply states “Hockey’s Back. Are You?”
So far, the fans are.
In nine home games, the Islanders have sold out four, most recently Wednesday’s win over the Avalanche. Friday night’s tilt with Toronto, a 3-1 win, drew 15,541, just shy of a capacity Coliseum that now holds 16,234 after seats were removed to accommodate television cameras before the season started.
“Our fans have been, to me, outstanding all year,” Laviolette said.
Islander fans, though they’ve been scarce the last few years, are back in force, and everyone on the team knows how important it is to have such a rowdy bunch behind them with the game on the line.
“It’s great. They’re so passionate,” captain Michael Peca said. “They’re so involved and stay in tune with everything.”
Though the Islanders would love a new arena, the barn in Uniondale has a personality to it, from the crowded rafters lined with championship banners and retired numbers to the locker room that shakes before games as the fans roar on top of it.
“It’s an older building,” Laviolette said. “It’s got an atmosphere to it. It can be a pretty rocking place.”
Even when the building isn’t totally full, the fans have been louder than their numbers would indicate. But Friday’s crowd, which filled the entire upper bowl, was loud and reacted to more than just what was happening on the ice.
Former Islander Travis Green, who nailed a just-concussed Kenny Jonsson after he was traded to Anaheim in 1998, was heckled worse than any other opposing player this season by the Coliseum crowd. Green later coughed up the puck on the Isles’ third goal.
But as much as they don’t like Green, the Coliseum crowd despises the other New York hockey team.
As the Rangers were getting clobbered by the Caps, the score would flash on the Jumbotron, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 5-2, 6-2, and while the Isles try not to watch the out-of-town scores, they knew exactly what was going on as the Rangers fell out of first place in the division.
“The fans let us know pretty well that the Rangers were getting beat,” Laviolette said.
And then, of course, they played the infamous “Chicken Song” that spells out how the home fans really feel about the Islanders’ cross-town rivals.
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D Radek Martinek (knee) returned against the Leafs, making the play that led to the Isles’ first goal. Martinek will allow Laviolette to cut some of his defensemen’s ice time, as Roman Hamrlik (27:49 a game), Adrian Aucoin (25:54) and Kenny Jonsson (25:05) all have helped make up for his loss.
