“It was so cool. And it was freezing.”
Thomas Vanek doesn’t have strong memories of the first Islander-Ranger outdoor game, played 10 years ago in Yankee Stadium. It was a dud of a game, played in near-zero wind chills, a 2-1 loss by the Islanders in a season filled with losses, both on the ice and on the roster. Vanek was kind of a symbol of the Isles’ 2013-14 chaos. He was a surprise addition in the last week of October, traded to the Isles for popular top-line wing Matt Moulson and a first-round pick in a move by GM Garth Snow to jump-start a team that began that season 4-4-3.
Vanek was terrific on a top line with John Tavares and Kyle Okposo. The Islanders as a team were awful, going 5-15-4 after the trade and sinking away from a hoped-for postseason berth. By the time Jan. 29 rolled around, the fanfare of the outdoor game in The Bronx was more of a sideshow to what was going on with the team. And Vanek was right in the middle of it.
“Once you get traded there, you get to know what the Island is all about and man, I fell in love with that place,” Vanek said earlier this week from his home in Minnesota. “The people are a little crazy, kind of like a European soccer crowd, and I just loved it. The chanting at the Coliseum, sometimes a little vulgar. The way they showed up at the Garden for Isles-Rangers games. The passion is high level.
“Literally after being there for 48 hours, I loved it. I knew Grabs (Michael Grabner) a bit, a fellow Austrian. I knew Okie a little bit. But Johnny, Cappy (coach Jack Capuano), Dougie (assistant coach Doug Weight), Garth — it was a first-class organization that I didn’t know anything about.”
Vanek had 44 points in 47 games as an Islander. If you take away a games-played minimum, that’s one of the best point-per-game averages in franchise history; Tavares had 53 points in that same stretch and Okposo had 49. “That was the best line I ever played on,” Vanek said. “We could score goals but we threw our goalies under the bus a few too many times.”
The weeks surrounding the Yankee Stadium game were also pretty memorable. Four days earlier, the Islanders dropped a 4-3 shootout decision to the Blues at the Coliseum; Vanek thought he had the winner scored in overtime off his skate, but the NHL’s Situation Room overruled the officials on the ice and declared there was a kicking motion. Vanek’s postgame quotes were music to Isles’ fans ears.
“I don’t know if it’s who we are,” Vanek said then. “If that’s Pittsburgh or a top team, that’s maybe a goal. It’s just a terrible call. We all know what a kicking motion is.”
Reminded of that now, Vanek laughed. He certainly understood what it was like to be an Islander or an Islander fan awful quick. “With Buffalo, we had some good teams and that got us some breaks,” he said this week. “When you’re struggling, it feels like you don’t get any breaks. We were the best line in the league for a few months and it felt like we got no calls. Guys would hook and whack Johnny and he’d never flop, so he didn’t get a call. It was frustrating.”
The week after the loss to the Rangers at Yankee Stadium word came out that Vanek turned down a seven-year offer from the Islanders worth $7.1-million per season. Looking back now, Vanek identified the sole issue in declining: The team’s impending move to Brooklyn, which happened prior to the 2014-15 season.
“I had three young boys at the time, it was already announced the team was moving to Brooklyn and I just couldn’t see my family enjoying that long commute,” he said. “The team not being good was not an issue — I knew they were gonna be good. I loved Garth, he knew what he needed to get and he went and got it with (Johnny) Boychuk and (Nick) Leddy the next year. The team was never an issue.
“I loved the Coli — sometimes less is more. The move to Brooklyn — that’s the one thing I didn’t fall in love with. I don’t know how many games the family would have gone to. Speaking to the guys after the move, some days it wasn’t so bad, some days they hated it. It’s great they have that new building now. I wish they’d have gotten it 10 years ago, I would have stayed longer.”
The week after that news broke, Vanek and Tavares were off to Sochi for the 2014 Olympics. Vanek captained Austria in its first Olympic hockey appearance; Tavares played for Canada, sustained a knee injury and put an even bigger damper on an already lousy Islanders season.
Vanek returned and a week later was dealt to the Canadiens at the trade deadline. Snow reached out on July 1 and made another offer, but Vanek chose the Wild. His Islanders tenure was consigned to those chaotic three-plus months.
“I played in four outdoor games and I’ll always think that one in Yankee Stadium was the coolest,” Vanek said. “Being in the Yankees clubhouse, the whole atmosphere was something different. It was a weird year. Definitely a memorable one.”
(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)
