Ed Westfall: Leadership Personified
By Stan Fischler
Ed Westfall was the Islanders’ first captain; the leader who knit a young team together and who -- by his work ethic -- emerged as a legendary member of the franchise.
Exhibit A was on display during the Islanders’ 1976 semifinal Stanley Cup series against the Montreal Canadiens. Westfall was fitted into his skates with a broken ankle and played almost an entire game. That episode helped a lot of people understand why Number 18 wore the "C" on the front of his uniform.
"We can get by without Eddie for one game," said General Manager Bill Torrey. "But we're thinking in terms of a series. He means so much to us....."
Torrey didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to, because everyone knew what the captain meant to the Islanders. Westfall was the glue that bound the hockey club together. He was their leader.
That was the way it was planned when Westfall was plucked from the roster of the powerhouse Boston Bruins in the 1972 expansion Draft. Still, no one could have blamed Eddie for being discouraged.
There he was, a successful veteran player who, in one fell swoop, had been demoted from Stanley Cup winner to the ice pits. But Westfall didn't whine about the move.
"The way I looked at it," explained Westfall, "there was a lot of responsibility for me to take on with that team. I was expected to be the leader and to help the inexperienced players along by showing them what was to be done and how. To me, that was a challenge which was very satisfying.
“Naturally, it was a blow to be rated (by the Bruins) as somebody they didn’t need anymore. I’d always been in the Boston organization. We’d had a good deal of success and it was a wrench to leave the club I’d been a part of.”
Westfall proved to be as important to the Islanders as he had been to the Beantowners. He was a skater who brought respectability to the term “utility player.”
Originally a defenseman, Eddie eventually played every position except goal and gave the Islanders that kind of depth and versatility that every team needs. But Bill Torrey knew darn well how important a “utility player” could be – and so did number 18.
Asked to define his game, Westfall once told this to me: “There’s no set price on many of the things I do as there is with goals and assists. Perhaps, in fairness to myself, I should devise some method of bookkeeping on such things as how many records stack up against that of the man playing opposite me.”
With consummate patience and fortitude, the captain helped mold the Islanders into a playoff team -- only three years after the franchise was born -- and in the 1975 playoffs, he demonstrated while he also could have been labelled “Captain Clutch.
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Skating against the heavily favored Rangers in the opening best-of-three round, he led his team into the pivotal overtime period of Game Three, and it was Westfall who launched the play that led to J.P. Parise’s winning goal.
“Playing alongside Eddie gave me a new life,” said Parise who had been given up for finished by the Minnesota North Stars. “Eighteen was the kind of leader that inspired the other guys on the team. That’s how we upset the Rangers and then, in the next round, the Penguins.”
The Pittsburgh series –not to mention the manner in which the Islanders triumphed – helped stamp the franchise with the label, “The Comeback Kids.”
Just about everyone had given up on coach Al Arbour’s club after the Penguins had rung up a three-games-to-nothing lead. “We weren’t ready to quit,” Westfall remembered. “All we wanted to do was win Game Four and then see where it would all go from there.”
So they did just that. They won Game Four, Game Five and then Game Six.
“Having grown up in Canada and not that far from Toronto, I knew that the Maple Leafs were the only team in NHL history ever to be down three games to none and then win the next four in a row,” Westfall said. “They pulled that off in 1942 against the Detroit Red Wings. Now we knew that we could go down in the history books as the only other club to match the Maple Leafs’ rare accomplishment.”
Game Seven was played at the Igloo in Pitt and it remained a zero-zero tie well into the third period when Westfall once again showed why he wore the “C.”
Here’s how Eddie remembered the decisive play:
“Our defensive defenseman, Bert Marshall, took the puck away from one of the Penguins and went down the boards. I was starting out of the zone when I saw what happened and I started for the net, yelling ‘Bert, Bert’ all the way. Then he shot it to me.”
Pittsburgh goalie Gary Inness saw the magical goal unfold this way: “What could I do about Westfall? He kept moving in from the side. I stayed as long as I could, then I had to move with him. The instant I did, he put it past me. Westfall was an old pro. He never panicked.”
But that was not the end of the game. It was 1-0 Islanders and now they had to protect the lead with five minutes remaining in regulation time; and they did just that.”
Westfall: “What struck me was when Chico (Resch) came over to me after the game and said, ‘You know, Eddie, after your goal, they never got a shot.’ Actually, we knew that we could rely on Chico, but we never put him to work."
Number 18 passionately paced his team to the seventh game of the next round before the Flyers defeated him and his pals. He kept guiding the club through the 1978-79 season after which he retired to become a much-adored sidekick to Jiggs McDonald on the Islanders broadcast team.
Looking backward at Eddie's illustrious career, I inevitably return to the breathtaking night at the Igloo and how Westfall personified the team he led. Typically modest, he offered these postscript comments:
"Anybody could have gotten that goal, but I just happened to be the lucky one. In retrospect, I can say that that goal represented the Islanders. It summed up the hard work of all the guys. Big goal and the team played big with great discipline!"