J.P. Parise is gone too soon at 73, but his goal—11 seconds into overtime on April 11, 1975—lives on as one of the most operatic moments in the history of both the Islanders and Rangers. That night at Madison Square Garden, Parise’s quicksilver strike, ending the three-game, first-round playoff series, not only represented the Islanders’ coming of age—their NHL bar mitzvah after a pair of seasons that only could be described as the Terrible Twos—it also prolonged a Rangers narrative as the sport’s Tantalus. From 1940 on, never quite drinking from the Cup.

As Newsday’s back-up hockey reporter to the esteemed Tim Moriarity, my assignment that night was the losers’ lockerroom, where I found the Rangers—almost to a man—to be fairly eloquent in summing up their emotional crash.

That included the feisty Derek Sanderson’s declaration that “The Atlanta Flames are better than the Islanders. The Islanders won’t win another playoff game.” (Of course, the Islanders won seven more, through the next two series, and soon reeled off four straight championships before the Rangers, 19 years later, at last won their first Cup in 54 years.)

Here’s what Parise had the Rangers mulling that evening:

“It reminds me,” the dashing winger Rod Gilbert said, “of when I was a bachelor, and I would find the most beautiful girl and say, ‘Meet me somewhere,’ and then at the last second, she says, ‘No.’ It’s like that. It’s a big ‘No.’”

Future Hall of Fame defenseman Brad Park, who was a half-step slow in getting to Parise before Parise converted the goal-mouth pass from Jude Druin, called it “a humble feeling to be sitting there with the puck in your net and the other team jumping for joy.”

As the Rangers soaked in their disappointment, the scrappy forward Pete Stemkowski admitted, “I won’t adjust to the season being over until the Stanley Cup playoffs are over. But, maybe the 20 guys in this room can adjust better than the people who aren’t playing—family and friends. We’re under pressure and we just do our best. We can handle it. But the people who live and die with us, they’re the ones really hurt, I think.”

Rangers forward Steve Vickers, whose third-period goal capped a Ranger comeback from 0-3 to 3-3 and forced overtime, called it “the most embarrassing defeat I’ve ever suffered. Losing to the Islanders….it’s going to be a long summer having people asking about it.”

At the time, most of the Rangers lived in Long Beach, close enough to the Islanders’ Nassau Coliseum home to sense a rush to the Islanders’ bandwagon. “The most frustrating thing,” Rangers goalie Ed Giacomin acknowledged, “was when we went into the Coliseum [for the series’ previous game] and seeing all those ‘Choke’ signs the Islander fans had put up. And now, my fans on the Island, they might be Islander fans now.”

Just as pointed at the “Choke” signs were the “1940” chants, which would go on for almost two more decades. To such historic references of failure, Vickers said, “I don’t take the whole thing personally. The Destiny and Fate thing with the Rangers doesn’t faze me at all. I’ve only been here three years, not 40. I had a good year and, anyway, I don’t look back. It’s not my policy.”

Thoroughly reasonable for Vickers to say then. But now, with Parise gone, look back. That goal was a notable moment in New York’s hockey doings.