Fight Is Only Attack Islanders Can Muster in Loss to Rangers

They call it hockey. For 59 minutes and 58 seconds it was pretty darn good hockey. Then the definition got lost.

Then the mostly benign and often amusing rivalry between the New York Rangers and the New York Islanders turned ugly. Nobody should be surprised if it stays ugly for the rest of the series.

“It’s a physical game,” said Chris Nilan, who had come off the ice with his Rangers jersey ripped into a V-neck and patches of skin missing from his knuckles. He plays that game.

And for some of the people in Madison Square Garden Thursday night, it was just the sort of thing they liked.

Blame Al Arbour, who sent his knuckles onto the ice to give a message with two seconds to play. “Disgraceful,” said Rangers General Manager Neil Smith, who grew up in hockey as Arbour’s protege. “I’m really disappointed in Al Arbour.”

Blame the Rangers’ fans who stood and cheered and jeered as Pat LaFontaine lay motionless on the ice and then was wheeled off on a stretcher. Had they been in the corridor to see LaFontaine wheeled out, his head immobilized, a blanket up to his neck, his hand wiping at the corner of his eye, they still would have regarded him as an Islander to be despised.

You just have to take them at their word. “Dig a hole and bury this pond scum,” one of the fans in the snakepit of the blue seats said. If there was dissenting opinion, it wasn’t heard.

Blame hockey because it panders to those fans.

And those fans should not be surprised if Bernie Nicholls, perhaps the best of the Rangers, is a target in Game 2 Friday. Nicholls certainly won’t be surprised. In the heat of a baseball pennant race, if the best hitter on one team is drilled in the first game of the series, expect the best hitter on the other team to be turned upside down the next day.

“If they think that was a dirty hit on Patty, I’d expect some guys to do something about it,” Nicholls said.

“We’ll have to see the video,” Arbour said. “If there was something there, we have long memories.”

What happened to LaFontaine when he was checked hard by James Patrick and immediately knocked over by Nilan is subject to interpretation. LaFontaine took a hard shoulder and forearm -- a hockey check, as they call it -- at the side of his head with 1:17 left in a 2-1 hockey game. The Rangers had double-teamed LaFontaine all game, beginning with Nilan’s fist to LaFontaine’s head in the opening minute. Nilan is thoroughly experienced in the role.

That’s the way the Devils eliminated the Islanders two years ago, the last time they were in the playoffs. LaFontaine doesn’t get all that much help from his side. Rangers Coach Roger Neilson knew how that worked. The Rangers are the division champions; the Islanders barely made it to the playoffs. If the big guys could take the little guys out of the game early, there would be no contest.

“I thought we had some really good hits early and then the big hit on LaFontaine,” Neilson said.

There was this sequence of events. First Alan Kerr upended Nicholls at center ice while the puck was dead. Of course Kerr and Nicholls had tangled against the boards a few moments earlier. Nicholls said that he wasn’t hit all that hard and had tried to act his way into a penalty.

But no, he said, it hadn’t been a clean check. “He was frustrated. That’s the way he plays.”

Then LaFontaine was hit. “I don’t think anybody likes to see somebody get hurt,” Nicholls said. “It was a clean hit.”

“Take the body,” Mark Janssens of the Rangers said, as if saying “Semper Fi, Mac” or reciting the pledge of allegiance. “This is a hockey game, isn’t it? He’s their team’s key player. Each team is out to hit everybody.”

And so they did. With two seconds left on the clock and not much hope left in the game, the Islanders tried to hit everybody. At least those Islanders that Arbour sent out to play the last two seconds did.

“At the end you know what those guys are out there for,” Nicholls said. “Vukota and Baumgartner weren’t out there to tie the score in the game.”

Mick Vukota and Ken Baumgartner are on the team more for their combativeness than for their hockey skills. “That’s their job,” Nicholls said. “They’re trying to help their team.

“Obviously it had to help their hockey team. They’ve got one of the best coaches, in my opinion, in the league. Why did he put them out there?”

He was dripping with sarcasm. If the Rangers were going to take the body, then Arbour was going to have his players exact a price. Neilson was certain that he’d seen cause and effect.

“If Al Arbour leaves the Islanders, I’m sure he’ll be welcome in the Eastern League,” Neilson said with keener sarcasm.

Of course, given his own history, there’s little doubt whether Neilson would have done the same. He did as much with Toronto and Vancouver, trying to muscle Mike Bossy out of the game.

In this case it was Arbour, who didn’t have to resort to goons and bullies when he had the best talent in the league at his disposal. Other teams tried to draw the Islanders into brawling and the Islanders laughed and put the puck in the net.

They felt good about themselves. They felt they could be above the muck and mire of the game because they were better. If somebody wanted to start something, they had guys who could handle it.

This time Vukota went out to do a job. “He didn’t go after anyone else,” said the Rangers’ Jeff Bloemberg, a conscientious objector. “He realized I was the only one out there who’s not a fighter and knew I wouldn’t retaliate and he took advantage of it. He came right after me.”

The hard fact was that the Islanders couldn’t muster a real attack, couldn’t put real pressure on Rangers goalie Mike Richter. He was bigger than anything they threw at him.

“No comment about what happened at the end of the game,” Brent Sutter said.