On February 15, 1972, Bill Torrey was hired as the first employee of the New York Islanders. He had no office. He had no phone. He had no players. What he had was a vision, a bow tie, and a philosophy about how to build a winning hockey team that was so patient, so disciplined, and so correct that it would produce one of the greatest dynasties in the history of professional sports.
Torrey grew up near the Montreal Forum and studied psychology and business at St. Lawrence University. He understood people, he understood organizations, and above all, he understood that winning in hockey required a foundation — not a quick fix. When the Islanders' original owner, Roy Boe, told him to build a winner, Torrey gave him a clear-eyed warning: "I told Roy Boe to expect nothing from the expansion draft. I told him that we would have to get rid of most of the players we picked up as fast as we could." Then he told Boe the team would likely lose for a while, accumulate high draft picks, and eventually be great. Boe believed him. The patience that followed made everything possible.
The expansion draft of 1972 gave Torrey what he honestly described as "19 problem children" — aging veterans, marginal players, and guys the established teams were happy to give away. Among them, buried near the bottom of the picks, was a young goaltender named Billy Smith from the Los Angeles Kings. Smith would win four Stanley Cups on Long Island. Torrey could see things others missed.
The Draft That Built a Dynasty
Finishing last in their first two seasons gave the Islanders the top picks in the 1973 and 1974 drafts. In 1973, Torrey selected Denis Potvin first overall. Montreal Canadiens general manager Sam Pollock — one of the shrewdest executives in the sport's history — immediately approached Torrey with a package of proven players in exchange for the pick. It was tempting. An expansion team desperately needed immediate help. Torrey said no. Potvin would become the greatest defenseman of his generation, the captain of four championship teams, and a Hockey Hall of Famer. It was the right call.
In 1974, Torrey had one of the greatest single-draft days in NHL history. He selected Clark Gillies fourth overall — a bruising power forward who would anchor the championship line alongside Bossy and Trottier. Later that same draft, he took Bryan Trottier in the second round, 22nd overall. Two Hall of Famers, one draft. And with picks in the seventh and fifteenth rounds, he added defenseman Dave Langevin and Stefan Persson — both of whom would be part of all four Stanley Cup teams.
In 1977, with the 15th overall pick, Torrey faced a choice that haunted fourteen other general managers for the rest of their careers. The available players included a prolific goal scorer from Montreal named Mike Bossy, and a more defensively responsible forward named Dwight Foster. Bossy, scouts warned, couldn't check. Torrey's chief scout Jim Devellano and coach Al Arbour both advocated for Bossy: it's easier to teach a scorer to check than to teach a checker to score. Torrey picked Bossy. He scored 53 goals as a rookie, setting an NHL record, and went on to score 50 or more goals in each of his nine NHL seasons.
The Partnership with Arbour
No account of Bill Torrey's legacy is complete without understanding the partnership he built with Al Arbour. Torrey hired Arbour as the Islanders' head coach in 1973, when Arbour was a relatively unknown assistant. Their working relationship became one of the most effective in sports management history — a model of clearly defined roles and mutual respect. Torrey handled personnel. Arbour handled the team. Neither crossed into the other's domain. Clark Gillies, who watched them for a decade, said it simply: "I don't think you'll find, in my opinion, a general manager and a coach that were on the same page for most of the time. They always seemed to be together making the same decisions, the right decisions."
When the team needed to be shaken up, Torrey made the move. When the team needed to be steadied, Arbour held the room. Together, they turned a doormat into a dynasty in eight years — and then sustained it for four consecutive championships and a fifth Stanley Cup Final appearance.
The Final Piece
The moment that completed the dynasty came on March 10, 1980. Torrey sent forwards Billy Harris and Dave Lewis to the Los Angeles Kings for center Butch Goring. The trade is considered by many to be the finest trade deadline acquisition in NHL history — not because Goring was a superstar, but because Torrey had diagnosed exactly what his team was missing and found the precise player to fill the void. "What it did," said Clark Gillies, "is that it gave us two experienced centermen with Trots and Butch." Six weeks later, the Islanders won their first Stanley Cup.
The Legacy
Bill Torrey left the Islanders in 1992 after the team missed the playoffs. He immediately went to Florida and built the Panthers into a Stanley Cup finalist in three years, proving that what he had done on Long Island was not luck — it was method. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a Builder in 1995. He received the Lester Patrick Award for service to hockey in 1983. The Florida Panthers retired the number 93 in his honor.
He passed away on May 2, 2018, at the age of 83, in West Palm Beach, Florida. His banner at UBS Arena — black and orange, bearing a bowtie and the words "The Architect" — hangs alongside those of the players he drafted: Potvin, Trottier, Bossy, Gillies, Smith. Those men played the games. Torrey built the team that let them play those games. Without him, the dynasty does not exist. It is that simple, and that extraordinary.