(
)
Here is how Charles Wang, the Islanders organization, Gary Bettman and the chronically battered fan base of what has become the NHL’s Shipwreck Franchise know the club’s move to Brooklyn three years hence is a win-win for all interested parties:
Not even I can conjure a negative response to it.
There are issues for the franchise to confront over the next three years that include: 1) building and nurturing a fan base comfortable with using mass transit to get to the games; 2) constructing a practice rink somewhere around the new neighborhood; and 3) addressing whatever issues there might be with the sight lines from the stands of Barclays Arena.
But even with work ahead, yesterday’s announcement immediately transforms the Islanders into a viable franchise, perhaps even a destination franchise for marquee free agents who could live in the same tony parts of Manhattan as do so many Rangers and be just a few minutes from home.
As the crow (or Michael Grabner) flies, it is 29 miles from the Coliseum to Brooklyn, a darned sight closer than the distance from Uniondale to Seattle or Kansas City or Quebec.
I have written often that given the choice in 1957 between having their beloved Dodgers relocate from Flatbush to Queens, as Robert Moses proposed, rather than Walter O’Malley’s cross-continent move to Los Angeles a year later, Brooklyn’s fans would have signed on the spot in blood for the subway ride.
Islanders fans on Long Island may feel a loss today, but they have not lost their team. Fact is, they have regained their team.
Wang, the owner, did not put the team up for auction and he did not betray the loyalists, not with this move. He has, with this announcement, breathed life into the franchise that has been on life support for years and whose greatness had frayed beyond recognition and repair.
The Nassau Coliseum was a grand old barn in its time. There used to be a dynasty there. But for decades there have been just ghosts of greatness and ghosts of spectators rattling around the place. The Islanders became a floor team in payroll and in the standings, unable to attract marquee talent even when offering to substantially overpay.
Now, if the front office can conduct business as rationally regarding personnel matters as the owner did in this transaction, there is a brave new world awaiting the Islanders and their fans.
It is preposterous that there are two teams in the boroughs and another in Newark while the NHL allows the Maple Leafs to maintain a monopoly in Toronto. But that is another issue entirely, as was the decision to celebrate an NHL development even while the league remains dark by choice.
It is possible the team will lose some support on the Island over the next few years from fans who will not take the subway or the LIRR to watch hockey after a lifetime of driving to games. The truth is, though, that it will be all but impossible to tell if a segment of the population stays away — kind of like doing math with negative integers.
They were going to move anyway. There was no choice. Mike Bossy wasn’t coming back and neither was Bryan Trottier. Denis Potvin wasn’t going to be back in his No. 5. Butch Goring wasn’t coming down to the ice from the television booth.
The romance was gone a long, long time ago. The Islanders might have left with it. They didn’t. They aren’t leaving. They’re just moving a few blocks away.
What’s that saying in Brooklyn? Oh, right. Wait ’til three years from now.
larry.brooks@nypost.com