Butch Goring of the Islanders comes around the net to take a shot on goal. Credit: Newsday
Butch Goring had figured — or at least strongly hoped — he’d be with the Los Angeles Kings, the team that drafted him in the fifth round in 1969, for his entire NHL career. That confidence only grew after he signed a five-year, $1.25 million deal with the Kings in 1978 rather than jumping to the WHA’s Edmonton Oilers.
Yet he was in the visitor’s dressing room at The Forum on April 11, 1980, with the Kings holding a 3-1 lead over his new team, the Islanders, going into the third period of their best-of-five first-round playoff series and looking to take a two-games-to-one-lead.