What’s old is ‘new’ again
Isles set for 21 at Coliseum
ON FRIDAY afternoon, Islanders coach Barry Trotz was reveling in telling stories about old minor league hockey rinks, because that’s what you do when you’re killing time in the bowels of a minor league rink.
And truth be told, that is what this “refurbished” Nassau Coliseum is as it prepared to host the Islanders’ return on Saturday night against the Blue Jackets. It is the first of 21 remaining home games (out of 30 total remaining home contests) that will be played at the old barn, now holding 13,900 with a single-digit number of suites.
A quick look around during Friday’s practice, and it’s anyone’s guess how all of the $170 million was used in the renovation. Maybe there’s faux-wood over some concrete walls, and those whip-smart marketers from Brooklyn brought a lot of black and gray paint along with the hip silver lettering to all the signage. If the swirling metallic facade looks like a futuristic spaceship, then the universe isn’t very big.
Lipstick on a pig was made for this exact moment.
But there is also something — actually, a lot of things — about the Coliseum that make it possible to put the nonsense on the back burner, at least temporarily. Somewhere deep down, there’s a soul in that place. Around where Trotz was holding court, there are ghosts walking around wondering where they could get a cold beer and a smoke.
“As old as it might be, as dark as it might be, it’s still a special place,” alternate captain Cal Clutterbuck said.
None of the players or management need to say it publicly, but the Islanders never liked Barclays Center, and they don’t like it any more now than when they moved in for the beginning of the 2015-16 season. It is not a hockey rink. It hardly feels like a sports arena. It is so cold and impersonal it almost feels sterile. If you’ve never noticed the faint smell of cologne pumping through the air ducts, you’re in the minority.
Which is not to say it’s unlike any new arena being built, with first-class amenities all around. It’s just miss- ing something; the things that make you want to go back.
“The buildings are so generic now,” Trotz said. “The older buildings are intimate, if you will.”
You know, Trotz almost closed the Coliseum to hockey the first time when he was coaching the Capitals in 2014-2015, playing Game 6 of a first-round playoff series there. But the Islanders managed to win that game, 3-1, with Clutterbuck getting an empty-netter that almost actually brought the house down — if not setting the asbestos raining from the ceiling.
“You could feel it shaking in here,” defenseman Thomas Hickey recalled.
Back then, the fans were cheering in hopes of there being another playoff round, because it seemed like the team was leaving for good. After losing Game 7 in Washington, at least the fans could say they closed the Coliseum with a win.
But now, just less than three years later, they’re back. Assuming things go well, come next season, the Islanders might ditch Brooklyn altogether and play all their home games on Long Island as they await the building of their new arena at Belmont Park, which is set to open for the 2021-22 season. Odds are there isn’t much to be gained or lost financially on the decision, and it only makes sense for the comfort of the team and the fans.
And this “new” Coliseum might still be minor league by today’s standards, but sometimes those places are the ones with the best stories.
“It’s still the Coliseum,” captain Anders Lee said. “You can’t take that out of the building. You can’t take all the history out.”