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Professional athletes have a tendency to embrace some fairly bizarre superstitions, and hockey players are certainly no exception. However, it’s hard to think of a stranger example than one involving the bag of elephant poop the Islanders once relied on to turn their fortunes around in the playoffs.
Anyone who keeps tabs on the NHL knows anything can happen when the Stanley Cup Playoffs roll around. It’s notoriously difficult to predict how the postseason is going to unfold thanks to hockey players who have an uncanny ability to dig deep and leave it all on the ice in pursuit of what is arguably the most iconic trophy on the planet.
Most of those athletes will be rocking some lengthy facial hair by the time the Stanley Cup Finals wrap up each year thanks to the “playoff beards” that can trace their roots back to the early 1980s. We can credit the New York Islanders for starting that superstitious tradition, as the team gave their razors a break while winning four consecutive titles between 1980 and 1984.
The Islanders may have come up short in their Quest for the Cup in 1975, but they nonetheless managed to defy the odds after falling to a 3-0 hole against the Penguins with the help of a very unconventional good luck charm.
The Islanders mounted a wild comeback against the Penguins with the help of some elephant poop
Prior to 1975, only one NHL team had managed to mount a comeback after losing the first three games of a seven-game playoff series: the Toronto Maple Leafs, who did exactly that en route to beating the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1942.
The Islanders found themselves in that unenviable situation at the hands of the Penguins on April 17th after dropping the first three games of their quarterfinal series. New York had earned the right to face off against Pittsburgh after beating the Rangers in a three-game series, where it secured both of the wins it needed to advance in enemy territory at Madison Square Garden.
During that tilt, those crosstown rivals were sharing the iconic venue with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which had apparently stashed its menagerie of animals in and around the arena during the series—and the presence of those exotic creatures was apparently a bit hard to ignore thanks to the odors that they generated.
The Islanders desperately needed a spark after going down 3-0 and held a team meeting to try to figure out the best solution. They realized both of the wins they’d racked up transpired at MSG and decided to dispatch someone to track down some elephant dung they could use to capture the essence of the barn where they’d found some success.
A bag of pachyderm poop eventually ended up back in the team’s locker room at Nassau Coliseum, and on April 20th, they earned their first win of the series after embracing that unorthodox approach to aroma therapy.
An equipment manager was tasked with bringing the poop down to Pittsburgh, and the Islanders secured another victory to put another dent into the deficit. The smelly source of positive vibes continued to travel with the team, and they ultimately capped off the comeback with a 1-0 win in Game 7.
The Islanders continued to try to harness the power of the poop in their subsequent showdown with the Flyers, but the magic ultimately wore off over the course of a series Philadelphia won in seven games before beating the Sabres to win the Stanley Cup.