The Islanders Are Saying Goodbye to Brooklyn

“I’m overjoyed,” added Cuomo, who grew up in nearby Queens. “The Islanders should be in Long Island. When they moved to Brooklyn, I felt the air come out of the balloon. It was not right, not the way it was supposed to be.”

Next season is expected to be their last at the Coliseum before the team moves to Belmont Park. The Islanders’ last game at Barclays Center will be March 22 against Carolina.

In January 2018, Cuomo announced that the team would return part-time to Nassau Coliseum before its new home at Belmont was ready. In the 2018-19 season, the Islanders played about half of their home games on Long Island (21) and half at Barclays Center (20). This season’s planned breakdown was 28 at Nassau Coliseum and 13 at Barclays Center.

“This has been our home forever,” Anders Lee, the Islanders captain, said. “We love playing here.”

The Islanders announced in December 2017 that the state’s top development agency, Empire State Development, had accepted their proposal for an 18,000-seat arena adjacent to the Belmont Park grandstand.

The new arena will host at least 41 Islanders games a season. A 400,000-square-foot retail village and a hotel are also part of the $1 billion project, which broke ground in September.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/sports/hockey/islanders-nassau-coliseum.html