Along with their subsequent miserable campaign under Henning, as well as the fact that general manager Don Maloney traded away a number of popular players like Pierre Turgeon in April 1995, team ownership and management started to associate that classic logo with the recent failures rather than the championship seasons a little more than a decade earlier. Not only did the Islanders lose all four games, but they were also outscored a combined 22-3 in the four defeats. Not only was the logo different, but the sweater featured a wavy design all around, including some dizzying numbering and lettering on the back.įrom a hockey standpoint, the 1994 first-round loss to the Rangers was particularly jarring. What is evident is that the Islanders’ front office didn’t do nearly enough research before making the sudden switch from the logo that fans associated with one of the greatest hockey teams of all time to whatever this was. But I think it was a real product of the times, before sports branding became more sophisticated, before social media existed, at a time when you could maybe get away with doing some things and fly under the media radar.” “It’s kind of impossible to think that a professional sports franchise today would commit some of the same mistakes and experience some of the same fan backlash without responding sooner. “It’s one of the most colorful, bizarre, infamous eras that any hockey team has experienced, mixed in with some good times, but a lot more negative,” Hirshon said. “ We Want Fishsticks” was released four years ago, on Dec. There is no greater authority on the Fisherman Era than Nick Hirshon, a journalism professor at William Paterson University and who authored a book about the two seasons the Islanders wore that logo. One of the strangest eras of Islanders hockey, and in recent NHL history, was underway. But there was not much anybody could do at that point.” He continued: “I’m sure there were some people that thought it was interesting, but there were a lot of people that I found pushing back. Milbury, the thinking went, was the perfect personality to instill that kind of scrappy attitude into the inexperienced group.Īnd, he was a marvelous choice to be the face of their massive rebranding effort, as the Islanders suddenly moved away from their classic blue and orange logo, featuring a map of Long Island and a hockey stick, to a menacing fisherman in a teal slicker and hat with a fierce, angry scowl painted across his face. ![]() ![]() The undermanned Islanders, just 15-28-5 in the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season (the second-worst record in the league), were going to have to scratch and claw if they were going to improve in 1995-96, with a young roster devoid of elite-level talent. This was a guy who was involved in some heated battles with those late 1970s and early 1980s Islanders during his playing days in Boston as a Bruins defenseman, and who once climbed into the stands during a gong show of a brawl and infamously beat a fan with his own shoe, for crying out loud. They fired coach Lorne Henning on after just one unproductive season, opening the door for Mike Milbury, then a 43-year-old hockey analyst with ESPN and someone well-known for his fiery demeanor both on and off the ice. Regarding the latter, the Islanders did make quite a splashy move. Something had to be done, and it had to involve more than just changes to the roster and coaching staff.
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