The Islanders' Best Lachance So Far

The Islanders' Best Lachance So Far
By Dave Feete, Old Grouch

Kiddies, I'm a-gonna share with you a tale of mine that I remember from my youth. See, around about '90 or '91 there was this young whipper-snapper defenseman comin' out of Boston U, who eeeeverybody was so dang excited about. Why, at the time, people were talkin' the kid up like he was gonna be the new Coffey, or Leetch, like they do to every dang young hotshot who hasn't seen a durn second of NHL ice time. As I recall, the kid went by the name of Lachance.
Well, golly, my memory ain't what it used to be, but I seem to recall that he was drafted fourth overall by the Islanders way back in '91. Yep. And then went off to serve his country in the W-W-2, a-fightin' the Germans tooth n' nail in Nicaragua. Saved his entire battalion from the VC. Came back and won the Medal of Honor, even got so loopy as to show LBJ his butt. Well, either he did that or joined the US Olympic Hockey Team, I cain't recall.
Yup. Every gol-durn Islander fan was watchin' them games with a plentiful amount of drool a-comin' out of the corners of their mouths, a-hopin' and a-prayin' that they were looking at the next Denis Potvin. Well, with no goals and one paltry assist in eight games, not too many Isles fans were a-hootin' and a-hollerin' about them numbers, I can tell you.
"There's always added pressure once you get picked in the draft," I can hear him say, as if it were yesterday.
Anyway, after a-servin' his country in some fashion or another, the kid returned for the end of the long-since-lost Islander season, playin' in their last 16 games. Played durn admirable too... Went +13 for a purdy bad team in that short time. Not too bad for a young greenhorn just a-barely cuttin' his baby teeth.
Which made the Islander organization just gleam full a' pride. Had such faith in the kid that they let rock-steady Joe Reekie slip away to Tampa Bay fer nuthin' in the expansion draft just to hang on to him. Which was about as much faith as the Islanders showed in anything or anybody back in those days.
But, as sometimes happens, life warn't so jim-dandy after that. The next year, and the next few in fact, Scotty just couldn't keep up. Seemed like the flashes of brilliance he showed every blue moon were buried in a big pile-a games where ya couldn't tell if he was thar a-tall. Seemed like he was lost in the years he shoulda been risin' up and makin' a name for himself. Lotsa fickly, nutty Islander fans were callin' him "a bust." Optimists like me were gettin' head pains hearing comparisons to Wayne McBean, a d-man who was taken reeeal high in the '88 draft, and was (at the time) a-strugglin' to keep his spot in the Isles' roster.
It's funny, I ask him about it now, and he just ain't bitter a-tall, don't blame the fans, media, nobody in the organization for puttin' pressure on him.
"They gave me my fair shot," Lachance reckons. "They took the pressure off."
Gives a ton a-praise to his Hall-of-Fame former coach to boot: "Al [Arbour] was great for my confidence early on, you know. He didn't expect too much from me until I did grow into a better player," he remembers fondly.
Well, after figgerin' that he wasn't gonna be Brian Leetch, Lachance picked himself up by his bootstraps and settled on a style of play that has suited him mighty well.
"You have to make adjustments as you get older," he confided. "And as the competition gets better. It's something you have to adapt to, and it has to do with adapting to who you play with as well."
Who you're playin' with? I figgered for sure he was talkin' about the latest young hotshot Islander, Bryan Berard. Come to think of it, them two are paired up a lot.
"Yeah, well, [Berard has] changed my style 'cause it's made me probably play more defensively, play more of like, in a role of maybe Kevin Lowe, which is a great... sure, steady defensively. That's why I think I've molded him, I have to try to play a little bit more for him."
"I guess, I'm steady, you know?" he said, when I asked him to ponder his new-found consistency. "I take care of my zone before I would go up in the offense, right? I'd say, I haven't gotten the points this year, but I'm steady. I like to call myself a two-way player, but obviously I'm a little better defensively than I have been offensively."
He's made such strides that this season he dressed with the Eastern Conference All-Star Team. A lotta you young fellers might not appreciate how long and hard Scotty's road has been, so I hadda come an' fill y'all in. Oh, sure, I heard it all, about him being an injury replacement for Zig-Zag Ziggy Palffy. But he played the game well, and weren't in over his head a-tall.
"It was definitely an experience," he told me. "I was obviously surprised, but it was an amazing feeling, walking in the room the first day on Friday. For practice and pictures, when you look around the room and you see the jerseys hanging up, players you've grown up watching."
"I played with Paul Coffey, for a lot of shifts, and I grew up watching him in Edmonton," he said, laughin'. "I'm sure maybe he doesn't want to hear that!"
A tear comes to my eye seein' how much more comfortable he is in the locker room, so much more mature.
"So that was an honor, and of course, I played with Scott Stevens, it was ... It really didn't matter to me who I played with, just as long as I was out there playing."
Nice to see an all-star without the high-falutin' attitude that ordinarilly goes with it like bread does with butter.
"I always liked the Flyers," he remembered, gettin' talkative all a-th' sudden. "So I try to emulate a guy like Mark Howe, who was great defensively and did a good job offensively as well. So of course a guy like that. And of course Ray Bourque who, well there weren't many defensemen who didn't try to emulate him."
Nice to see a man finally at peace with himself, just a-startin' to make his name known, not a-carin' about fame, nor personal glory, nor the lights, action and loose women of the big city accross the way.
"I'm just having fun at just about everything I do," he says, with a look of true serenity. "I mean, first it started with the draft, being drafted that high was a tremendous feeling, and it was great to have my parents there with me. Then getting to the [1993] Stanley Cup Semi-Finals was a great experience. Then the All-Star game, it's one of those things where I'm just having fun."