When looking back 45 years ago as a member of the New York Islanders’ first Stanley Cup championship, Glenn “Chico” Resch can’t resist smiling.
With just over one month to go in the National Hockey League’s regular season before the postseason begins, and the race to crown the next Stanley Cup champion begins, Resch remembers his first (and only) taste of winning the sport’s grand prize. Legends are created during the postseason, be it individuals blocking pucks or scoring goals in overtime. Some teams will win one championship, then there are others who will dominate multiple seasons.
When the Stanley Cup Finals get underway in May, memories of hockey dynasties will resurface. Not only did the Islanders collect their first Cup in the spring of 1980, they went on to win three more consecutively. Armed with four NHL championships (1980–1983), a feat that no professional team in either the NFL, NBA, or MLB have duplicated since, the Islanders made it back to the championship round for a fifth season in 1984. After 19 consecutive playoff series wins, it was the Edmonton Oilers who unseated the defending NHL champions. The Wayne Gretzky-led Oilers won the scheduled 7-game series in five games.
Joining New York in their second season in the NHL, Resch, who today is a team ambassador and radio broadcaster for the New Jersey Devils, takes pride in remembering that 1973–1974 season. Many of his initial Islanders’ teammates were on the 1980 Stanley Cup roster that bested the Philadelphia Flyers in six games.
“It was like make-believe; a magical time,” Resch told The Epoch Times. “I look back on my first season with the Islanders, how we stood up to the New York Rangers, and the toughness of the Flyers who thought that they could intimidate us. Then, for a kid from Regina, Saskatchewan, and the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and never really being out of the Midwest, I realized just how special winning the Cup was.”
The odds of the Florida Panthers, last season’s NHL champions duplicating what the Islanders accomplished back in the 1980s are stacked against them. Along with overcoming injuries, and an assortment of other intangibles to possibly be the last NHL team standing this spring, according to Resch’s assessment of winning the Cup, they must be lucky.
“Things have to come together like you can’t imagine they will,” says Resch, who saw his seven-season stay with the Islanders come to an end in March 1981, when being traded to the then Colorado Rockies. “There wasn’t anything that year that as a team we were missing.”
To further lament just what a hockey juggernaut the 1979–1980 Islanders unit was, individually, five players have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Coach Al Arbour, general manager Bill Torrey, and Director of Scouting Jim Devellano, all part of the “brain trust” of that first Islanders’ championship, they too, have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Looking back to the 1979–1980 championship season as being one of the most impactful years of his life, Resch credits teammate J.P. Parise as a mentor and confidant to him. There is a seemingly endless string of stories followed by laughs coming from Resch, while remembering all the personalities on the Islanders’ initial championship team.
“Bert Marshall was just terrific. Dave Lewis was part of the best dedicated defensive group I have ever seen. Stefan Persson, Clark Gillies, Mike Bossy, Butch Goring, my list goes on and on of all the special players our team was blessed with,” Resch said.
During New York’s eighth NHL season skating out on Long Island at Nassau Coliseum, Resch and fellow goalie Billy Smith split playing time. Smith, who would remain with the Islanders for 17 seasons and be inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1993, played in 38 games during the 1979–1980 regular season, while collecting a 15–14–7 win-loss record. Resch, who was put in Arbour’s lineup for 45 games, turned in a 23-14-6 record.
Unlike the baseball championships won by the New York Mets and Yankees, or even the crosstown NHL rival Rangers, who all received ticker-tape parades in lower Manhattan, the Islanders were shunned by the City of New York. Long Island’s Nassau County stepped up for a celebration at Mitchel Field, just west of Nassau Coliseum. Although the Islanders didn’t skate home games in New York City, Queens, one of the five boroughs of the City, and Nassau County border one another.
“I learned that winning is a lot about playing defense that season. Offensively, I learned you can never win with just one line. Typically, teams can’t shut down two lines,” Resch recalls. “For me, the two big factors that occurred during the Cup season was us getting Butch Goring in a trade with the Los Angeles Kings, then Ken Morrow coming to us from the Olympics (Team USA that won the 1980 gold medal).”
Resch points to his Islanders’ teammates as overcoming crunch time, time and time again in the postseason of 1980.
“God touched my life to play on Long Island. I don’t need the championship ring or the jersey. All I want is memories of the greatest season of my career. We all matured as a team with the Islanders. When I think of the Islanders, I can’t help but to smile.”
