Skating From Under A Shadow

While Francis has indeed always tended to alter his operational policies at the first sign of a minor crisis, Billy Bow Tie never panicked during those days of the hapless Islanders. Torrey , who ran the only successful team that the NHL has ever had in Oakland , is a superstitious sort who will not sip his standard pre-game extra-dry vodka martini unless there are two olives nestled inside. "Two olives mean two points for a victory," he says. "One means one point for a tie and no olive means...guess what?" Torrey also is the only NFL general manager with a serious academic background, having graduated from St. Lawrence University nearly 20 years ago.

"Right from the start I committed myself to a definite youth program," Torrey said Saturday night as he swirled the two olives in his martini before the Islanders' 4-2 victory over the Black Hawks. "I told Roy Boe [club president] to expect nothing from the expansion draft. I even told Roy we'd have to get rid of most of the players we picked up in that draft just as fast as we could." The rival World Hockey Association helped Torrey in this regard by signing seven of the 19 players the Islanders selected. "We had two other peculiar problems," Torrey said. "The people in New York thought we were brand X compared to the Rangers , so we could afford to be brand X for a while. No one expected us to win many games. At the same time I knew that Atlanta , which came into the league with us, would have a much stronger team than the Islanders and that people would be making a lot of comparisons. So what? Atlanta had to win immediately because hockey was a new game in town and the people there wouldn't support a loser. The Flames had to win now. We could win later."

As Torrey had predicted, the original Islanders were awful, so terrible, in fact, that they drove two coaches, Phil Goyette and Earl Ingarfield, clear back to Canada . At the end of that first season Torrey offered the job to Al Arbour , a no-nonsense defensive tactician who had been fired not once but twice by the brain trust of the St. Louis Blues . Arbour declined. "When I discussed the job with my wife," he said, "all she could think about was the muggings in the streets of New York . Then we went on holiday to Florida and met a couple from Long Island on the beach. For two days they kept selling us on what a great place Long Island was, that it was nothing like New York City , that it even had trees. So I called Bill back, told him that I wanted to bring Claire to Long Island for a look and, well, here I am."

Arbour's present Islanders mainly are made up of Torrey 's amateur draft choices, all of whom are under the age of 24, but include Defensemen Bert Marshall and Jean Potvin, Denis' older brother, and rookie Goalie Glenn Resch , who discovered hair transplants before Gaylord Perry ; three holdovers from the expansion draft—Center Eddie Westfall, Defenseman Gerry Hart and Goaltender Billy Smith; and two veterans, Winger J.P. Parise and Center Jude Drouin, whom Torrey managed to steal from the Minnesota North Stars . Parise, tough in the corners, scored two power-play goals in the Islanders' triumph over the Black Hawks, while Garry Howatt and Bob Nystrom , two products of Torrey 's scouting system, scored the others.

Howatt, a 22-year-old, 5'9", 170-pound epileptic, established himself as a fighter last season by winning 25 of his 29 main events, the best fistic record in the NHL . However, he only scored six goals. This season he rarely fights—"Nobody wants to fight him," says Potvin—and has scored 18 goals while playing on a kid line with 22-year-old Nystrom and 22-year-old St. Laurent. Nystrom , the blond Nordic hammer, was such a poor skater when he joined the Islanders that Torrey made him take lessons from a female figure-skating instructor. Now he skates gracefully, if not quite in Peggy Fleming 's class, and has scored more than 20 goals in each of the past two seasons.

Denis Potvin , meanwhile, had two more assists in the Chicago game, as did brother Jean. The Potvins work the points together on most Islander power plays, and occasionally team up on defense. For Denis, it was a quiet night's work. He rushed only rarely, concentrating primarily on his defensive duties at the insistence of the steely-minded Arbour, who carried the puck past his own blue line maybe twice in an 11-year career as a defenseman. Potvin would still like to bring the puck out himself, but he understands his coach's reasoning. "We're going for the playoffs, and the pressure is on now," Denis says. "Al's right. I can't take any chances with the puck. I've got to play defense like a defenseman."

Potvin and Orr have one basic similarity on the ice: they both control the flow of the play. They initiate the attack and oftentimes personally conclude it; Orr has scored a record 42 goals already this season. Eddie Westfall played for Boston when Orr arrived there in 1966 and for the Islanders when Potvin came in 1973, and he does not hesitate to compare them. Westfall also likes to play fun 'n games with Potvin . After hearing Arbour tell Potvin that he was skating with a bag of cement tied to his backside, Westfall went out, bought a 100-pound bag of cement and had it wheeled onto the ice for the unsuspecting Potvin .

"As personalities," Westfall says, "Bobby is quite shy and bashful, while Denis is bashful but not that shy. Denis is more physical than Bobby. He will throw a good hard body check, whereas Bobby will separate a player from the puck with some quick moves of his stick. The big difference really is quickness. Bobby has three speeds of fast, and he can get his body going in 10 different directions all at once. Denis does not have Bobby's great bursts of speed; his tempo is much slower, much more controlled. Put it this way: when Denis beats you on a rush, he does it with a definite move involved with handling the puck. When Bobby beats you, he can do it with speed or with that definite puck-handling move. It's no knock to say that at this time Bobby is a more complete player."

"Let's be honest," Potvin himself says. "Bobby and I are worlds apart. He's the best in the world. I just hope that someday there will be occasion for people to describe a young defenseman as 'another Denis Potvin .' " Much to his regret, Potvin has saved some of his worst performances for games at the Boston Garden . "It's the mystique of Orr ," he says. "I can't ignore the fact that he plays there, that he is where I want to be. I feel the comparisons, sure. Who wouldn't? Unfortunately, I've never played well enough in Boston to justify them."

Potvin is not a stereotyped hockey player who lives, eats and sleeps with a puck in his hand. "He's a sophisticated kid," says Goaltender Billy Smith. "He goes out to eat and orders snails and the right bottle of wine. If a guy asks me what kind of wine I want, I say 'Mateus' because it's the only one I know." Denis says, "I'm afraid too many people over-dramatize my situation. I'm a hockey player, true, but I'm also a person, someone with a lot of outside interests. Hockey comes first now, but there are other things to do, too." As president of Denis Potvin Ltd., an American corporation chartered in St. Louis , with branch offices in Garden City , N.Y. and Montreal , Denis can keep close tabs on his business affairs, with help from the vice-president of Denis Potvin Ltd., his wife Debbie. The Potvins live in a spacious condominium about five minutes from the Nassau Coliseum and are deep into interior decoration. "We're going big for the earth colors, like browns and greens and oranges, and avoiding all the plastics," says Denis. They have furnished the apartment with a Queen Anne dining room set, a King George hutch and an orange-marble coffee table. "What I'm looking for now is an armless rocking chair for Debbie," Denis said last week as he set out on a quick shopping tour in Kansas City .