Islanders: Listen to Mike Milbury on Mike & The Mad Dog In 2003

Listen to this classic from 17 years ago. Then, New York Islanders General Manager, Mike Milbury called into the Mike and the Mad Dog Show.

Growing up in New York there was nothing like the Mike and the Mad Dog radio show. It was truly must-listen radio, before the days of smartphones and Twitter, it was your place to get your New York sports and nobody was better than them in their heyday.

The New York Islanders are not normally a team that gets talked about much on WFAN all that often but when they do it’s usually because there was some big news.

Well, on June 3, 2003, Mike Milbury joined the program to talk about why he decided to fire Peter Laviolette after consecutive playoff appearances.

What ensued next was all-time radio. Laviolette was the Islanders coach for two seasons, he made the playoffs in both 2002 and 2003 with the Isles after the team had an eight-year run of missing out on the playoffs before he got there.

Milbury claimed the team quit, and Mad Dog let him have it. The exact quote was “Mike how are you still the GM?”

The first time Chris Russo speaks into the microphone, that is the question. Clearly, Milbury wasn’t too happy with the question and the two would go back and forth for a while. He cited the playoff “success” as to why he was still around after using the team not getting over the hump in the playoffs as a reason to move on from Laviolette.

Russo clearly set him up for it and it was absolutely fantastic. The interview is long, it’s 28:29 but to hear Mad Dog go at him is just perfect.

Milbury blaming everyone but himself for that mess is just so maddening. Outside of Barry Trotz and Al Arbour, you can make the case that Laviolette was the third-best coach in team history and he was gone after two playoff seasons because of this maniac.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the evisceration.