Good Morning, Islanders Country.
Twenty-five years ago, the Islanders were in Lake Placid preparing for training camp when the world changed.
For first-year head coach Peter Laviolette, the timing was impossible to forget. He had barely begun his first NHL training camp when word of the September 11 attacks reached the team. “I was probably two minutes into my first training camp as a head coach in the National Hockey League,” Laviolette later recalled. “Day 1. I’ll never forget.”
The setting carried its own strange symbolism. The Islanders were in Lake Placid, home of the Miracle on Ice, one of the most celebrated moments in American sports history. But by mid-morning, hockey had become irrelevant.
Mike Milbury informed Laviolette shortly after the first plane struck. Players gathered around television monitors inside the arena as the scope of the attacks became clear. Laviolette emerged from practice in no mood to discuss hockey.
Players including Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca still spoke with reporters, but there was little doubt that the season, the roster and the excitement surrounding the Islanders had instantly become secondary.
The Islanders had acquired Peca, Yashin and Adrian Aucoin during an aggressive offseason and, for the first time in years, expectations were building around the franchise.
Then September 11 happened.
Everything else stopped mattering.
🏒 When hockey returned
Sports eventually became part of New York’s healing process.
Mike Piazza’s home run against Atlanta. The Yankees’ emotional World Series run. Mark Messier wearing the helmet of a fallen fire chief.
The Islanders would provide their own small piece of that return to normalcy.
The 2001-02 team opened the season 9-0-1 and ultimately ended the franchise’s seven-year playoff drought. On October 13, 2001, the Islanders played their first regular-season home game at Nassau Coliseum since the attacks.
The building became something more than a hockey arena that night.
Fans stood through warmups and an extended pregame ceremony. FDNY and NYPD hockey players joined the Islanders and Detroit Red Wings on the ice as an American flag was unfurled. Michael Buffer introduced the teams. Jamie-Lynn Sigler sang the national anthem.
Then, 36 seconds after the puck dropped, Oleg Kvasha scored.
The Coliseum erupted.
For a few hours, Long Islanders had somewhere to cheer again. They had something to distract them from what had become the new normal. It was sports delivered for New Yorkers, and people aroun the country
🚒 One Islanders fan whose fight never stopped
The Islanders’ connection to September 11 continued long after that night.
Hicksville resident and FDNY firefighter Ray Pfeifer was among the first responders who worked at Ground Zero and later developed cancer related to his service. Pfeifer became one of the most prominent advocates for extending health benefits to 9/11 first responders, helping fight for the Zadroga Act.
The Islanders honored him on April 2, 2016, when Pfeifer dropped the ceremonial puck before a game against Pittsburgh.
“There’s nobody who’s going to be more happy than me,” Pfeifer said beforehand. “To be in that venue, just to be in front of a hometown crowd and be with my team … it’s a dream come true.”
Pfeifer died on May 27, 2017.
Before his death, he continued fighting to ensure those who died from 9/11-related illnesses were recognized alongside those lost on the day of the attacks. The Ray Pfeifer Foundation continues that work today, helping first responders obtain medical equipment not covered by insurance.
Twenty-five years later, the Islanders’ connection to September 11 isn’t really about what happened on the ice.
It’s about the people in the stands, the people who served, and the role a hockey team played in giving its community somewhere to gather again.
Never forget.
And we leave you with this…read Alex Mitchell’s story in the New York Post about what inspired Patrick Dowd’s “Always Believe” sign.
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Really nice story Joe. Thanks.
Totally forgot that training camp for the 2001-2002 season was in lake placid! Fascinating. Can you shed some light as to the hows & why that happened? It was JUST that one year right? I'm wondering why & how come they haven't trained there again since?