Isles may return to Coliseum for season

For the first time since the Islanders left the Coliseum in 2015, the NHL has acknowledged that a shortterm return is possible.

While the team and New York State officially announced Wednesday that a new arena is going to be built at Belmont Park, the question is where they are going to play in the interim. They are locked in at Barclays Center for next season, and the earliest the new arena can be ready is for the 2020-21 season. So that leaves 2019-20 as a question, and the renovated Coliseum is now officially an option.

“That’s more a decision for the Islanders than it is for us,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an email to The Post on Friday. “But, given the alternatives while the new arena is being built, I would think the Coliseum option is certainly worthy of strong consideration.”

All previous mentions of the Coliseum as an option for the Islanders had been struck down by commissioner Gary Bettman. But, as Daly pointed out, those were all in reference to the Islanders going back there as a permanent residence.

“Obviously, it is extremely ill-suited to do that,” Daly wrote.

The building, which opened in 1972 for the Islanders’ inaugural season, recently went through a $165 million renovation by Forest City Ratner, and is operated by Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, which also runs Barclays Center. The Islanders played a preseason game there this season, and the problems still exist with limited corridor space despite a decrease in the seating capacity for hockey games to just more than 13,000.

The big question about playing in the Coliseum for one season is how it would affect the league’s shared revenue, with by far the smallest capacity of any rink in the league and so few suites to sell. In terms of how much money the team and league would lose, Daly said they had not run those numbers because there had not been a reason to — yet.