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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Isles moving to Brooklyn
Wang gets lease for Barclays Center in 2015
Kathy Willens / the associated press Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Barclays Center�s Bruce Ratner and Islanders� Charles Wang (from left) at announcement. (CP)
NEW YORK -- The New York Islanders finally have a new home and it's in Brooklyn, the borough that is suddenly a hotbed of pro sports 54 years after baseball's Dodgers headed west.
"It's a new place and it's only 35 minutes away by train," team owner Charles Wang said at a news conference Wednesday.
After seven months of negotiations, and offers to move the team out of New York, Wang announced the Islanders will relocate about 40 kilometres west once their lease expires at Nassau Coliseum after the 2014-15 season.
Since the day the Islanders entered the NHL in 1972, the Coliseum in Uniondale has been their place. It's where they grabbed the hockey spotlight, outshone the big, bad Rangers, and won the Stanley Cup four straight times from 1980-83.
But on Wednesday, the future became all about Brooklyn.
The move is hardly shocking and not even unprecedented. The old New York Nets left Nassau Coliseum way back when, relocated to New Jersey, and have moved into their new Brooklyn home -- the new Barclays Center that will also house the Islanders.
Unlike the basketball Nets, who changed the team logo and added Brooklyn to their name, the Islanders are sticking to their heritage.
That is important to Mike Bossy, a Hockey Hall of Famer who now serves as the Islanders' vice-president of corporate partnerships.
"Absolutely," he said. "Charles' main goal was to keep the team local, and he succeeded in doing that. As much as people may be upset because it's not going to be in Nassau County, they should be happy because he kept the team in New York."
The Barclays Center is across the street from the site Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley hoped to put a baseball stadium to keep his club in New York. He couldn't pull it off, so the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and the borough was without a major pro sports franchise until the Nets' arrival this year.
The Islanders hope this move will help them. The team hasn't reached the playoffs since 2007 and hasn't won a post-season series since 1993.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 25, 2012 C4
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