Clark Gillies, Rugged Star on Islanders’ Championship Teams, Dies at 67

Clark Gillies, the rugged Hall of Fame left wing who helped take the Islanders to four consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the early 1980s, died on Friday at his home in Greenlawn on Long Island. He was 67.

His wife, Pam, said the cause was cancer.

Gillies played alongside his fellow Hall of Famers Bryan Trottier at center and Mike Bossy at right wing on a line collectively known as the Trio Grande. Their Islanders won the Stanley Cup championship every year from 1980 to 1983 with a corps of young players.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 215 pounds, and sporting a black beard, Gillies struck an imposing image for a forward of his time. He was especially adept at muscling opposing players out of his way in their corners, then digging the puck out and passing it to Trottier or Bossy for a shot on goal. But Gillies was an outstanding scorer in his own right.

Playing with the Islanders for 12 seasons, from 1974 to 1986, he scored 304 regular-season goals and had 359 assists. His 663 points are fourth in Islander history. After two seasons with the Buffalo Sabres, he retired with a career total of 319 goals and 378 assists.

He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002.

The Islanders, who retired Gillies’s No. 9 in December 1996 in a ceremony at the old Nassau Coliseum, held a moment of silence for him before their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs at UBS Arena Saturday night. They shined a spotlight on his jersey hanging above the rink, and the Islander players wore his number as a patch on their uniforms.

“He made life easier for everyone who played with him,” Butch Goring, a center for the Islander championship teams and now a broadcaster for the team, recalled before the game. “Trottier and Bossy could do what they wanted to do because they had the big guy on the wing.”

Clark Gillies was born on April 7, 1954, in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, a son of Donald and Dorothy (Clark) Gillies. His father was a salesman at a department store. At age 7, Clark began skating in youth hockey leagues, but he played baseball as well.

The Houston Astros, who scouted him at a tryout camp in Saskatchewan, signed him as a catcher-first baseman with their minor league team in Covington, Va. Bob Bourne, whom Gillies had faced in youth baseball in Saskatchewan, was one of Gillies’s minor league teammates and later became his Islander teammate.

“They gave me three years to develop,” Gillies told The New York Times in 2011, recalling his time in the minors. “Then they said we think you have a future in baseball.” But Gillies recalled: “I was playing baseball two months a year and hockey nine or 10 months. I was excelling more in hockey than baseball. I said thanks but no thanks. Hockey was always first and foremost.”

Gillies joined the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League and starred on the team that won the 1974 Memorial Cup, which is awarded to Canada’s major junior champions.

He was selected by the Islanders in the first round (fourth overall) of the 1974 N.H.L. draft without having played in a professional hockey game. He established his toughness as a rookie when he pummeled the Philadelphia Flyers’ “enforcer” Dave Schultz and he later bested the Boston Bruins’ roughneck Terry O’Reilly in a series of fights during a playoff game.

Gillies became the Islanders’ captain in the latter half of the 1976-77 season but gave up that role to Denis Potvin in the 1979-80 preseason.

The Islanders’ dynasty got underway when they defeated the Flyers for the 1980 Stanley Cup championship. They bested the Minnesota North Stars, the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers in the next three Stanley Cup finals, then lost to the Oilers in the 1984 Cup finals.

Gillies remained a popular figure on Long Island long after retiring. While working in the financial world he kept in touch with Islander players and established the Clark Gillies Foundation, which assists children who are physically, developmentally or financially challenged. It has also helped finance construction of the Huntington Hospital pediatric unit.

In addition to his wife, Pam Goettler Gillies, he is survived by his daughters Brianna Bourne, who is married to Bob Bourne’s son Justin; Jocelyn Schwarz; and Brooke Kapetanakos, as well as eight grandchildren.

For all his reputation as a tough guy, Gillies never incurred 100 penalty minutes in a season. His high was 99 in 1980-81 when he scored 33 goals with 45 assists.

“People want me to run around the ice hitting everything that moves,” Gillies told The Times in February 1982. “But that’s not me. If a teammate needs me, I’m there and the guys know it and the opposition knows it. I can fight if I have to, but I would rather just play hockey.”