Those Islander teams, beginning with the 1979-80 team that won the first championship, forged a bond with Long Island that's still strong more than a quarter of a century after Bob Nystrom's overtime winner in Game 6 of the Finals started a dynasty.

"It was a special relationship then, it's a special relationship now, and it always will be," General Manager Bill Torrey said of the love affair between the Isles and their fans. "We feel it whenever we come into the building, and it always will be special."

The current Islander team, which did its part to keep the fans' mood festive by beating the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-2, was delighted to have a chance to mingle with their illustrious predecessors.

"It was exciting to meet those guys before the game," said forward Trent Hunter, who capped the night with an empty-net goal and thumped Flyers all night. "You hear so much about what they accomplished. I was pretty wide-eyed before the game."

Potvin said the players from the championship team got a warm welcome from this season's Islanders.

"Most of them probably never saw us play," he said. "But they know about us. Management has kept the pictures, kept the trophies. There's obviously a tradition that's still here. They can't avoid that. They can see it every day."

Goaltender Rick DiPietro said the Isles "had a lot of guys checking out the TV" to watch the pre-game ceremonies. He could feel the buzz, too.

"The crowd was really amped up," he said. "This is a big deal not only for our fans, but for us. This is part of our tradition; part of where our franchise came from.

Potvin, the team captain and the last player introduced, carried the Stanley Cup as he joined his teammates on the ice to the kind of noise the Coliseum has rarely heard in recent years. He got the sellout crowd even more revved up when he followed Torrey and Arbour to the microphone during the ceremonies and twitted the Isles' archrivals.

Islanders' great and Hall-of-Fame defenseman Denis Potvin played to the crowd during the ceremony.

"How many Cups?" he roared.

"Four!" the fans bellowed back.

"Who (stinks)?" he asked.

"The Rangers!" was the gleeful reply.

The Isles' coaching staff got into the spirit of the night by wearing bow ties in honor of Torrey, whose preferred neckwear is on the banner honoring him that hangs from the Coliseum rafters.

"It's a gesture of respect for what he's done for this team," said coach Brad Shaw, who joked that he's spent a half-hour in a tuxedo store learning how to tie a bow tie. Like his players, Shaw got a thrill out of seeing the 1980 champions.

"It was special to have them all together," he said. "I had a chance to talk to Bryan Trottier, and it was eye-opening to hear what the game was like back then. That team was really unique. They grew up together as hockey players and as men. They were a unique group of men -- one that might not be able to be replicated."

Coach Al Arbour, who took over a team that had won only 12 games in its expansion season in 1972-73 and turned it into a Cup champion seven years later, noted that off the ice, his players "were all individuals. But when they took the ice, they played as a team, and they played for each other."

It's been more than a quarter-century since the Islanders won their first title, but the feeling between those Islanders and their fans -- both those who were there and those whose exposure to the dynasty days is limited to television -- is every bit as strong today as it was then.

"The walk across there (to the Coliseum with the Stanley Cup) was just amazing," Potvin said of the crowds that lined the route through the parking lot. "People remember us, and with things like Classic Sports now, it opens up a whole world of what sports was like years ago. The kids today know a lot about us."

Though the Islanders have struggled for most of the 20-plus years since the dynasty ended with a loss to Edmonton in the 1984 Finals, Torrey urged the fans not to give up hope of winning the fifth Cup, the one the Isles came up a round short of winning 22 years ago.

"We wish them the very best," he said. "All of us here on the ice want to see them succeed."