New York Islanders

It’s all about winning players

 I wish the Islanders had more guys who know exactly what it takes to win the Cup. Guys like Petr Sykora.

Sykora is exactly that type of player. Yeah, he’s bounced around, playing on five teams during his 13-year career, but he won a championship, with New Jersey in 1999-2000 and got to the finals with Anaheim in 2003. He’s now turning into the ultimate playoff rent-a-player. For whatever reason he didn’t look like the greatest investment in the Eastern Conference finals or first four games of the Stanley Cup finals, registering just a goal and an assist. However, he changed all that in the third overtime on Monday.

If you were watching Game 5 as intensely as I was, you may have seen Sykora tell NBC’s Pierre McGuire on the bench during the first OT that he was going to score the winner. That stuck in my mind the rest of the game. I ran to my car after I got out of work to catch the third period and when the legendary Sam Rosen did his famed “it’s a power-play goal!” call midway through the third extra session, I just knew Sykora had scored.

After a split-second delay, probably because Rosen was trying to figure it out himself, he screamed Sykora’s name. Immediately I said, “Damn man!”

Sykora reminds me of Butch Goring, not so much physically — Goring was more of a miniature bull, while Sykora is more smurf-like than anything — but definitely mentally. He just knows where to be on the ice at all times and scores big goals.

Of his 300 or so NHL goals — counting playoffs, about one-third have come in the final five minutes of games. He has 32 goals and 68 points in his playoff career.

Overtime heroics are nothing new for Sykora, who ended the fourth-longest NHL playoff game in a fifth extra session on April 24, 2003, during Anaheim’s run to the Stanley Cup finals. That team was coached by current Detroit bench boss Mike Babcock.

“We have a great thing going right now. We just wanted to win this game,” Sykora told The Associated Press in the early morning hours following the Game 5 win. “We didn’t really look ahead. Now we’re going back home. We’ve got nothing to lose. We know what we have to do and hopefully we can bring it back here to Detroit.”

The one knock on his game is he’s a total finesse player. He doesn’t like physicality, and his 6-foot, 176-pound frame isn’t really built to withstand the rigors of bone-crunching NHL playoff action. Yet, Sykora consistently finds his spots on the ice and delivers in the clutch.

The Devils made a mistake trading him back in 2002 because New Jersey is always in a position to contend for the Cup. Had the Devils been rebuilding, I could understand moving him, for Sykora is not a player you build a franchise around, but he’s certainly one that you turn to in the postseason.

If the Penguins are smart, and they usually are when it comes to building teams, they’d keep Sykora around so that he can continue to provide that veteran presence and clutch mindset to players like Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal going forward. Sykora will only be 32 when next season gets underway and probably has three more good years left of around 30 goals, 60 points and playoff headaches for the opposition.

I’d take him on the Island in a second. Even if his production tailed off he’d be worth it for any team because of all the intangibles he brings to the ice on a nightly basis, the types of things the Islanders haven’t seen in 15 years.