Friday, November 1, 2013

Happy Birthday Al Arbour

 photo courtesy of http://graphics8.nytimes.com/

Today, former Islanders Hall of Fame coach Al Arbour is celebrating his 81st birthday.

Arbour took over the head coaching reigns of the Islanders in the 73/74 season which was the teams second season in existence.  From there they never looked back as Arbour ended up leading the team to 4 straight Stanley Cup titles, 19 straight playoff series wins, and 739 wins in 1499 career games as coach.  It wasn't until 2007 when then head coach Ted Nolan noticed the odd numbers on Arbours records and wanted to give the Hall of Famer a chance to fix that.  So, to do that Nolan handed the bench over to Arbour on November 3rd, 2007 for the Islanders game against the Penguins.  That game was Arbours 1500th game as Islander head coach and ended up being his 740th win as the teams head coach which puts him comfortably in first place in the category in team history.  Arbour was elected to the NHL Hall of Fame in 1996.

We here at Savetheisles would like to wish Arbour a very Happy Birthday and him many more.


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