Healy, Flatley were 'village clowns' on Islanders broadcasts in 1992-93

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday.
This week Fischler goes back exactly 30 years when two New York Islanders moonlighted as comedians in a fun television feature.

Whoever heard of a team having its own comedy act in the midst of a competitive run for the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
If the season was 1992-93 -- and that team was the New York Islanders -- the answer would be affirmative.
The two comedians were goalie Glenn Healy and left wing Patrick Flatley. They were serious enough performing on the ice and far less so off it.
Healy and Flatley were so hilarious, in fact, that an MSG Networks producer turned their impromptu chirping into 'The Heals and Flats Show.' It successfully ran for two seasons.
"We were on a team flight," Healy remembered, "so to kill time, me and 'Flats' went to the back and played chess. The trick was that there was a third man watching us, our MSG game producer."
Kevin Meininger listened to the nonstop barbs and when he stopped laughing, he made an offer the jokers could not refuse.
"Kev said it would be fun for viewers to hear us interact with each other in front of a camera," Healy remembered. "We said, 'Yeah, let's do it,' and the segment turned out to be a lot of fun, but maybe not for the National Football League."
Flatley: "I thoroughly enjoyed taunting the NFL as opposed to our Canadian Football League. I said you had to be tougher to play in the CFL because our Canadian heroes competed in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba where the weather is really cold compared to the NFL football fields, like the ones in California.
"Plus, the NFL has four downs while the CFL needs only three downs to do the job. That in itself makes the CFL more of a man's league."
Flatley was from Toronto and Healy was born in Pickering, Ontario. But New Yorkers loved their "Canadian" humor.
"Each had his own unique sense of humor," Meininger explained. "Both were really sarcastic, which is a badge of honor for anyone growing up in New York. So, that impressed me right away. I'd suggest the skits to them and then I'd just wind them up and let them go."
Flatley asserted that the key to their success was rooted in their "brotherly" friendship in which they always seemed to enjoy having laughs together.
"It was so easy because we had kidded around all the time," Healy said. "This was no big deal since, in the show, we were still ourselves. Like a pair of village clowns having some fun."

The humor often was directed at Canadian life. On one of their skits they pretended to do a Canadian travelogue, starting with British Columbia on the west and moving east. They were particularly hard on Saskatchewan.
"I suggested that they pave all of Saskatchewan and turn it into a parking lot for Eastern Canadians," Healy said.
Bob de Poto, now a retired MSG Networks producer, said 'The Heals and Flats Show' reminded him of a Canadian comedy counterpart called 'Great White North.' It was hosted by the McKenzie brothers, Bob, (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas).
"To their everlasting credit, Flats and Heals didn't settle for being an imitation of 'Great White North,'" de Poto said. "The natural chemistry and comedy sense of the duo resulted in its own brand of insanity. The indelible mark left by Patrick and Glenn cannot be erased nor forgotten."
The fame of the 'Heals and Flats Show' eventually extended into Canada. The producers of Hockey Night In Canada filmed a segment on it, including an interview with Meininger.
"The only show that Flats and Heals suggested by themselves was one of the funniest, and all ad lib," Meininger recalled. "Flatley actually had real contractors remodeling his house at the time, so we had a crew filming it. Their angle was that the contractors were ripping off Flats by sleeping on the job.
"Then, Glenn kept grilling them with questions like, 'Is this grove pine?' And one of the workers would say, 'No, it's wood.' Near the end, Heals says, 'If I were you, Flats. I wouldn't pay them.' And Flats shoots back, 'Pay them? I'm not paying them. I'm gonna give them tickets.'"
One critic described their act as "reality tv before reality tv. Two guys on camera shooting the bull and being darn entertaining. They were themselves as themselves; two great, fun guys."
Who was funnier?
"I was the straight man since Heals was the idiot," Flatley explained. "And being a goalie, he was somewhat unpredictable in the mood category. Therefore, he was not capable of being the straight man."
Meininger added that "Glenn was the more comical of the two. He used a lot more words and was more animated. He could get on a riff and just go with it. But the most fun was watching Patrick trying not to laugh at his pal."
The 1992-93 season was no laughing matter for the Islanders.
"We couldn't have done our show if we weren't winning," Flatley said. "Had we been losing, people would have said we weren't paying attention. But it worked out pretty good for us."
It sure did when one considers that the Islanders reached the Eastern Conference Final in 1993, losing to the Montreal Canadiens in five games. Along the way, they scored one of the biggest postseason upsets, defeating the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins in seven games in the second round.
Both Healy and Flatley concluded that the playoff success provided a good punch line to a season -- and a comedy show -- they'll never forget.