NY Islanders - Anyone Really Think This Through?

This is a companion piece to what I wrote in October. While the 2014-15 season started out very well for the Islanders last on Long Island, it was, ultimately as disappointing as any since Denis Potvin retired.

The only thing more ridiculous than the Islanders move to Brooklyn is that they even exist in the first place.

I've always had mixed feelings about the New York "Islanders" despite my always thinking of myself a "Long Islander" first and "New Yorker" second. Part of my sentiment stems from my Ranger loving father and how Manhattan-centric in general my parents were. Also, the team was housed not twenty five miles from Madison Square Garden and I always had difficulty understanding why if Long Island was to have its own sports team, why it would be in an area of the Island that had a brick-a-brack, "are we Long Island or are we part of New York [City] identity crisis". Add to that the reason for the teams existence in the first place, as a tool to block the WHA from putting a franchise at the why-the-hell was it built in the first place Nassau Coliseum and the New York Islanders made as much sense as the Russians putting missiles in Cuba; did anyone really think this all the way through?

The Atlanta Flames made the playoffs six of the eight years they played in Atlanta but never won a playoff series.

Let's suppose for a for a moment that the Islanders never had the success they had and instead, were as mediocre as the other team that joined the NHL the same year they did, the Atlanta Flames. The Flames lasted just 8 seasons in a city that was indifferent towards hockey and the organization packed their duffle bags for Calgary after the 1979-80 season. Would the Islanders, again, nothing more than a political pawn of the provincial NHL, still even be in the New York area had they not had the success they had early on? Bill Torrey, the General Manager of that great Islanders team that won four Stanley Cups consecutively between 1980 and 1983 wondered if the fans would continue to come out to the Coliseum if and when the team stopped winning. The answer to Mr. Torrey's question was a resolute, "no".

The Islanders of the late 1970's and early 1980's were one of the greatest sports teams ever.  

Sadly, the retooling of the team after it's inevitable decline came at a time when new collective bargaining agreements broke up the way the old NHL did business making it all but impossible to build a competitive team the way that Torrey built the Islanders; that being almost exclusively through the amateur draft. The teams that would prosper in the long term in the "new" NHL would be teams with significant cash flow. The Islanders, despite playing in very affluent Nassau County, always struggled with cash flow; even during the "glory years" of Potvin and company. In the new NHL, with no cash to sign free agents and some of the great talent the Islanders drafted leaving the team when they could for greener pastures, the team floundered. You can't blame fans for staying away from an organization that either refused to spend money most assumed it had or just couldn't figure "it" out. In fairness, though, if the NHL had free agency when the Islanders were just starting out, there's no way they would have been able to keep the team they had together. 5 Hall of Fame players on one team, all around the same age, at the peak of the careers and the core of the team staying together for over a decade? You'd never see that today and we will never see that again in any of the major league sports.

If you notice, the Islanders logo does not include Brooklyn and Queens which are actually part of Long Island. Only New Yorkers understand that despite that, Brooklyn and Queens are "not part of Long Island".

Now they're off to Brooklyn which is, ironically, on the same land mass as Nassau County but in many ways is as different from "The Island" as Cuba is from Manhattan. How the new owners of the Islanders believes the team will do any better being housed even closer to Manhattan than before is beyond me. One thing for certain, if the Islanders don't win and win quickly, despite a 25 year lease with the posh and modern Barclays Center, they'll find their way out of dodge much like the Atlanta Flames did. Perhaps, optimistically,  history will repeat itself and the Islanders will return to their glory days but don't bet on it.

While the Islanders do have very small albeit loyal fan base, the fair weather band wagonneers who chided Ranger faithful for years certainly got what they had coming to them.