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Bill Torrey’s greatness is there to see for anyone who cares to look

“Lookit.”

If Bill Torrey did not preface every sentence that way, it sure was pretty darn close.

“Lookit,” he would say as he did at a press conference in 1978, for instance, upon the announcement of the Islanders’ signing of a Swedish netminder named Goran Hogosta. “There’s no question that Hogie is a world-class goaltender and what that means for Chico [Resch] and Smitty [Billy Smith], we’ll have to see.”

Can’t win them all.

But for a time, and what a time it was, the Islanders of Bill Torrey and Al Arbour almost did win them all.