One day, Islanders great and Miracle on Ice member Ken Morrow was going for a leisurely drive in Huntington Village when a pair of police officers suddenly pulled him over.
“When they came up, I didn’t know why. I didn’t think I’d been speeding or anything,” Morrow told The Post.
“And their first words to me were, ‘I thought that was the Stanley Cup in the back of your car.’ With their lights going, they stood at my back window looking at the Stanley Cup and reading the names.”
It became one of the many memorable moments for longtime Northport resident Morrow, who won Lord Stanley’s hardware four straight times with the Isles — the first coming mere months after defeating the USSR juggernaut in Lake Placid.
In the Michigan native’s words, it didn’t take long to become a bona fide everyday Long Islander.
“You were just part of the local community, and you didn’t get mobbed or anything like that,” said Morrow, who now calls Kansas City home as director of pro scouting in the Islanders organization.
Still, the defenseman who fell in love with local beaches and drives on the scenic North Shore would “get a couple of people that would come up and knock on the door” occasionally.
“I remember one time, we had a school bus driver pull in our driveway, and we were trying to figure out what the heck was going on until he came up to the door,” he recalled.
“I struck up a lot of conversations with people. It certainly didn’t bother me at all that people wanted to do that.”
Now, nearly 45 years to that fateful day of May 24, 1980, when Morrow and the team celebrated their first Cup win in overtime of Game 6 against the Flyers, he remembers it all like it was yesterday.
“When Bobby Nystrom scored, I think the feeling was relief as much as it was joy,” Morrow said, adding that even climbing stairs became challenging when the Stanley Cup Final rolled around.
The Olympic gold medalist, now 68, returned to the island two summers ago and recounted his days on top of the world in his memoir, “Ken Morrow: Miracle Gold, Four Stanley Cups, and a Lifetime of Islanders Hockey,” co-written by sportswriter Allan Kreda.
From gold to silver
It was a blur when he arrived in Nassau County just weeks after the greatest hockey game ever played.
Morrow and his family first stayed in a Holiday Inn on Old Country Road near the beloved Nassau Coliseum, but they didn’t catch much of an authentic glimpse of the island he adores at first.
What he did see, however, were fans salivating for their first chance to win it all in the spring of 1980.
“You had a lot of interactions with the fans, which was a really great thing.”
His playing days were when spectators were much more accessible, as players parked outside the arena — right by pregame festivities that Morrow distinctly holds dear.
“The tailgating is something I’ll always remember — probably unique to Long Island. The people were out there tailgating hours before games,” he said, adding it was the first time he ever saw the grills going for hockey games and fans escorting players toward the door.
Leaving after a victory, when cars would blare a honk to the tune of “Let’s go Islanders!” is also something Morrow cherishes deep down.
“I probably did it, too, at some point,” No. 6 said with a laugh.
Rocking the barn
The real magic, however, came inside the Uniondale walls that shook with the passion of thousands who showed up every spring to watch their Isles vie for another title in the early 1980s.
“The roar,” Morrow, who still gets standing ovations at games, recalled, “that’s a memory that will stay with me. You could hear it through the walls of the locker room. It just gave you chills to walk out.”
Rather than looking back at the glory days that well predate state-of-the-art UBS Arena, he’s enthusiastic about what the team has done since — especially when the old barn rocked at dynasty-level decibels.
Morrow distinctly recalls the shaking that followed the Shawn Bates penalty shot of 2002 and the Isles’ conference final run nearly two decades later in 2021.
“There’s something about the old barn, and there have been some great moments in the history of the New York Islanders — especially in the playoffs,” Morrow said.
“It doesn’t take much to bring that out in our fans today.”
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