Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

The Islanders could be moving ... elsewhere on Long Island

New York Islanders Management Wait for New Arena Voter Referendum Results

UNIONDALE, NY - AUGUST 01: Owner Charles Wang the New York Islanders addresses the media to announce that the new arena voter referendum failed on August 1, 2011 in Uniondale, New York. Wang has said that without a new arena, he may have no choice but to move the team out of Nassau County. (Photo by Andy Marlin/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The biggest issue for Islanders owner Charles Wang when his arena referendum was voted down by Nassau County residents on August 1, was about what he would do to find a way to get a new arena and keep the Islanders on Long Island. After all, Wang has said his dream is to bring the Stanley Cup back to Islanders fans on the Island and bring glory back to the franchise. When his and Nassau County executive Ed Mangano’s referendum was buried by voters, hope to do that seemed all but lost.

Ah, but Long Island is a big chunk of real estate and Nassau County isn’t the be-all, end-all location for the Islanders. Sure, there are rumors of bringing the Islanders to Brooklyn in New York City or to Queens, but there’s another county on Long Island that could work as a potential landing place for the team... You just have to go a bit further to east is all.

With the Islanders lease at the Nassau County Coliseum expiring in 2015 and the Islanders in need of a new venue to play in, a neighboring county is getting Wang’s attention as a place to potentially move the team to.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy says he welcomes the idea of the hockey team moving to the eastern end of the island that he represents, as long as it’s good for the team and for the community.

He said on Saturday he called team owner Charles Wang last week to talk about the idea. Messages to an Islanders spokesman were not immediately returned.


Suffolk County is the other, more eastern half of Long Island as opposed to Nassau County and for fans getting a new arena a bit further out on the Island would mean a bit longer of a drive or train ride to get to games. Of course, fans won’t mind that too much as long as it means keeping the team in the area and not potentially moving to an entirely new location in three to four years.

It’s good that Levy reached out to Wang since Nassau County has been less-than helpful to Wang and the Islanders with any and all of his ideas on building a new arena for the team there. Wang’s privately funded Lighthouse Project plans were routinely shot down by the Town of Hempstead supervisor Kate Murray and now the publicly funded arena project was shot down as well by the voters. How this situation plays out is pretty emblematic of how insane politics are these days where the government officials won’t let a madcap billionaire spend his own money to make a dire situation better but instead try to get the people to pony up their own money on a smaller plan instead.

That said, if Levy and Wang can come to some sort of agreement to build things up in Suffolk County, it’s a huge win for Wang as he gets to keep the team on Long Island and gets to run away from the idiotic politics in Nassau County. While it might be a bit more inconvenient for fans to travel a little bit further east on Long Island to get to games, it’s a small price to pay so long as Wang is staying away from the publicly funded route for any potential arena plans in Suffolk County.