Two Friends, the 1982 Stanley Cup and a Long Island Parking Lot

As the game clock wound down on May 16, 1982, heralding the Islanders' 3-1 win over the Canucks in Vancouver, a sweep of their Stanley Cup Final series and a third consecutive NHL title, Seth Sackett and Barry Mannis decided to celebrate by greeting the team on its return home.
The 20-year-old friends hoped just to glimpse their heroes. Little did they know the adventure that awaited - a story ripe for telling 40 years later.

They'd met in 1979 during a study program abroad, bonding over their mutual Islanders fandom. Sackett had attended about 15 games in the three years beginning with the 1974-75 campaign that his Uncle Lester, a retired New York City police officer, worked as a bodyguard for a company with season tickets.
"I fell in love with hockey and the Islanders," Sackett says.
Mannis, too, first saw the Islanders in person in 1974-75 - in the franchise's first-ever home playoff game, an 8-3 loss to the Rangers, when an ill school chum stayed home. Mannis attended scores more games, walking the mile from his high school in Uniondale to Nassau Coliseum and plopping down $1 for a ticket, thanks to his student card.
On this Sunday night, Mannis strolled from his apartment near Queens College, where he studied economics, to watch the Islanders-Canucks game on television with the newlywed Sackett and his wife, Rhonda. With the victory nearly secured, Mannis somehow snagged the telephone number of the Pacific Coliseum's press box and dialed. He learned when the Islanders' plane would land and early the next morning, Sackett borrowed Rhonda's car and drove with Mannis to LaGuardia Airport.

At the airstrip, they joined other fans lining a fence, many holding celebratory posters. The plane parked on the tarmac and the team descended, waving at the far-away fans before boarding a charter bus. Sackett and Mannis recognized Dave Langevin. Another player was Stefan Persson - or maybe Anders Kallur; they couldn't be sure. Sackett snapped several pictures.
It was good enough. Sated, they re-entered the car and exited the complex. An overpass brought them over the Grand Central Parkway, which they planned to merge onto to go home.
At a red light, a bus pulled alongside. Another car's passengers cheered the bus. Sackett and Mannis realized who was aboard: the Islanders.
"Follow the bus!" Mannis ordered. "Let's see where they're going." The other car's occupants thought likewise.
Sackett drove eastward. The duo figured the destination was Nassau Coliseum, but they passed the Meadowbrook Parkway exit. That's when Sackett's gas gauge lit to indicate the tank's being nearly empty.
He got nervous.
"Keep going," Mannis said.
"We were two religious guys," notes Sackett, of their being observant Jews, "saying we trust in God."
They'd likely have to stop to refill - thereby ending the chase - or risk being marooned on Long Island.
Divine intercession came when the bus exited the highway, headed south on Route 110 and soon stopped inside Republic Airport, the two cars close behind.
Sackett and Mannis saw no police officers, security personnel or reporters. They had the place to themselves.
"We basically realized we're in heaven," Mannis remembers.

Coach Al Arbour exited the bus, cradling the Stanley Cup. Sackett and Mannis kissed the trophy and danced joyfully around Arbour, joined by the other car's fans. Mannis chatted with Bob Bourne. Sackett questioned Mike Bossy about the whereabouts of his Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the final, where he tallied seven goals, two coming in the clincher. After presenting it to him, Bossy told Sackett, league officials took it back, presumably to engrave his name at a later date.
Sackett saved his camera's last remaining exposure to photograph Billy Smith, his favorite player, who had on his Walkman's orange-foam earphones. Sackett still wore his orange-and-blue jersey from the previous night. They hugged each other, Sackett held up an index finger to signal victory and Mannis pressed the shutter.
"I can still picture it in my mind," Mannis says of the shot.
On they went. Sackett hugged Langevin and Bobby Nystrom and spoke with Denis Potvin. He asked Butch Goring about the bandages covering nasty cuts near his eyes. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine," Goring answered. Arbour placed the Cup in his car's trunk and departed.
Reached at his home near St. Paul, Minn., Langevin remembers only carrying the Cup down the plane's steps at LaGuardia that morning. He says he's pleased that these fans remember the scenes so fondly.
"We played for our legacy as players, but that we touched so many lives with what we do - it's such an honor," he says. "Like anything in life, if you can't share it with someone, it doesn't mean that much."
He signed his name, as did nearly everyone on the team, on a brown lunch bag, the only paper in Sackett's car. When mentioning Bossy and Clark Gillies, both recently deceased, Mannis uses the Hebrew term for "May they rest in peace."

Over time, Sackett and Mannis lost touch, but this story reconnected them. Sackett, who runs a nonprofit organization, found Mannis, the head of an investment firm, living just a few miles from him along Israel's Mediterranean coast. Sackett doesn't follow hockey much these days, but Mannis does - and a year ago watched the Islanders' playoff games on-line in the middle of the night due to the time difference.
Mannis still has the Islanders jersey he bought in the 1970s at a sporting goods store near his childhood home in North Bellmore. His son Ezra, now 26, wore it when they watched an Islanders game on TV together.
The 1982 experience of meeting their newly re-crowned heroes remains vivid for Sackett and Mannis, who have a combined nine children and 18 grandchildren.
"I'll always be a fan because of all those special memories," says Mannis. "It was the cherry on the cake of this special connection of a kid growing up in Nassau County in the 1970s with this team."
Says Sackett: "What impressed me was how nice [the Islanders] were. How many fans get to take pictures with players, hug them, schmooze with them? It was an absolute dream come true. Thinking about it and talking about it can still bring a smile to my face."