Investigating Billy Jensen's Islanders Fandom

If you are familiar with Billy Jensen's work, you will know he is a dogged investigative reporter, someone who has solved murders and chased stories with an unrelenting drive.
By his own accord, he approaches his job like a hockey player in front of the net, trying to pry pucks loose, taking whacks and all sorts of punishment just to score, or at least get in a goalie's kitchen. If you knock him down, he will get back up and give it right back.
So it is no surprise that when it comes to the Islanders, his fandom follows suit. All-in. All the time. Or in his words: diehard.

"I just love the team," Jensen said. "Having grown up right there, it's so much a part of me."
Jensen is the best-selling author of Chase Darkness with Me and contributor to I'll Be Gone in the Dark, the late Michelle McNamara's number one best-seller about the hunt for the Golden State Killer. He also co-hosts two podcasts, Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad, with Paul Holes, and The First Degree, with Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek, as well as Unraveled.
Long before that, he was a seven-year-old kid from Westbury, standing outside Nassau Coliseum with his dad negotiating with scalpers. They had ripped out the Coliseum seating chart from the Yellow Pages to bring with them, looking for seats as close to the blue line as possible. Jensen's dad preferred buying tickets in the 200 sections, but like most dedicated Islanders fans, had an experience of sneaking into the Coliseum's lower bowl.
"Often times we would buy tickets in not-so-great seats but then he would give the usher $20 to move us down," Jensen said.
That approach paid off more than once, including for Jensen's most memorable in-person game, the Isles Game 5 comeback vs Pittsburgh to save the dynasty in 1982. A quick refresher, the Islanders, who were two-time defending champs, were down 3-1 with 5:27 to play in the third period of an elimination game, and the dynasty was effectively on life support. Mike McEwen made it 3-2, setting up John Tonelli for the game-tying and eventual game-winning goals.

It is still vivid for Jensen, who was around 10 at the time. He remembers the people leaving the game early, allowing him and his dad to move closer and closer to the ice, and watching Al Arbour swap out his goalies, taking advantage of a warmup rule to give his team a chance to rest. He recalls Arbour, "looking like a professor," and the confidence the coach displayed.
"I remember looking over at Al Arbour, the picture of cool, ice in his veins," Jensen said. "He was being so cool and confident and his team was being so cool and confident. That instilled in me with the Islanders, 'we've got this.' We'd been so good in overtime that when you went to OT as an Islanders fan, the nerves were less."
Jensen has been to some Hall of Fame Islanders games. He was at Game 6 in 1980 for Bob Nystrom's Cup-clincher, Game 4 vs the Oilers in 1983 and Ken Morrow's OT winner vs the Rangers in 1984. He was also at Game 6 vs Pittsburgh in 1993, watching Darius Kasparaitis be a thorn in the side of Mario Lemieux and at Game 6 vs Toronto in 2002, watching Steve Webb throw his weight around.
That is at least a row on an Islanders bingo card. Add in another square for attending Bryan Trottier's skating academy in Port Washington and playing against Nystrom's "rival" hockey camp.
Jensen's first game was the home opener of the 1979-80 season, so the dynasty Islanders were part of his formative hockey years. Clark Gillies and Dave Langevin were his two favorite players, but he had a reverence for all the scrappy Isles like Nystrom, Garry Howatt, the Sutter brothers and Gord Lane. It is no surprise that he is a fan of Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck.
It was that love of the tough guys that led to one of the biggest breaks of his journalism career. In the mid-1990s, Jensen had graduated from college and was looking after his father's house painting business after his dad had heart surgery. In need of a creative outlet, Jensen wrote and self-published a zine called The Fight Card that chronicled every Islanders fight in the 1996-97 season, essentially a precursor to hockeyfights.com, that he handed out at the Coliseum.
"I took every Islanders fight, watched it and said who won and who lost," Jensen said. "I printed it out, it was like eight pages, and I stapled it, made copies of it and handed it out at games. I'd put it in the Coliseum bathrooms in the stalls. I did that twice and the Village Voice, which was coming out on Long Island, saw it and said 'We love this. Can you write an article for our first issue about all the Islanders fights this year?' That was my first paid gig in journalism."
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Jensen did some sports and entertainment reporting in his early days and had wanted to find a way into the sports management side, but his path led him to covering crime and using his investigative reporting to crack cold cases and chase down bad guys.
"I thought I would want to have a career in hockey, but as I started writing, I kept on wanting to write crime," Jensen said. "I've gotten to a place where I've been able to solve murders myself and help police departments solve them by using a bunch of different methods. I'm glad I took this route and can just sit down and enjoy hockey."
Hockey has always remained a life-long passion, whether it was starting roller and ice hockey teams at the University of Kansas during grad school, briefly playing in a pro roller league (Major League Roller Hockey), or following the Islanders. He still plays roller in LA - well, pre-pandemic.
"It's the thing I miss the most in this pandemic," Jensen said of playing hockey. "I miss playing. I love being in the slot, pushing people out of the way and getting into little scraps. I just miss it. It's the only time I can kind of get out of my head. If I have a two-minute shift, I'm not thinking about solving this murder or that murder, I'm thinking about what I have to do to stop this person from messing with my goalie."
Jensen currently lives in LA, so he gets out to games at STAPLES Center when the Islanders come through town, and during the 2019 playoffs he was posting up at Kevin Connolly's bar to be around likeminded fans. An Islanders bar is one thing - or deli, as he recently got a taste of Blue Line Deli on a trip back to Long Island - but it does not compare to being at the Coliseum.
It is a building that houses a lot of memories for the author, especially with his father, who passed away in 1998. Jensen remembers the one time his dad camped out at the Coliseum overnight to buy tickets and he organized a list of people who had waited for hours so no one could cut the line. There was also the time after an Islanders-Capitals game when Jensen, admittedly jeering, was poked by one of the Washington players coming off the ice, causing his dad to b-line down the tunnel to the locker rooms, before being stopped by security.
It is memories like that, in addition to all of the historic games and crazy crowds that stick out. Quirks and all, Jensen has a deep love for the old barn.

"After they took away Maple Leaf Gardens, the Montreal Forum, Joe Louis Arena, or even Edmonton, Nassau Coliseum was the last place where there was a dynasty. It's the last hockey cathedral," Jensen said. "Not to mention the fact that the ceiling is so low in there, when that building is rocking, it's shaking, you can feel it shaking. I've never been in a louder place than any of those Islanders games… Give me a playoff game at the Coliseum in the early 80s, or any day, and I'll take that over anything else in sports."
That said, he is excited about the progress at UBS Arena and for what it represents to the team - a permanent and state-of-the-art home.
"I think being at Belmont is going to make a world of difference," Jensen said. "This team could have been gone so many times and it would have ripped our hearts out, but we still have it and having that new stadium means that the team is going to be around for a long time."
Jensen could talk Isles for hours, going through the minutia and memories of his favorite team. He is confident in the club with Lou Lamoriello and Barry Trotz at the helm, and has hopes for a Cup after a run to the Eastern Conference Final last season.
The recent success and the new arena are the latest chapters in a story that started being written 40 years ago. Even in LA, or on the road, the Islanders are a connection to home, right down to the fact that a silhouette of Long Island is on the crest.
"It's just great that it's still there and I can wear a jersey or a t-shirt with an Islanders logo on it and be able to point to the map and say that's where I grew up," Jensen said.
(Top photo credit: John Francis Peters)