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Last Call in Nassau, Episode 6: Set in Stone

A final Islanders game at the Coliseum is a reminder of youth, heroes and of just how much has changed outside Nassau County.

By Dan Saraceni

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  • MARCH 24, 2015. NASSAU COLISEUM, UNIONDALE, NY. MINNESOTA WILD AT NEW YORK ISLANDERS: After all these years, I still enjoy seeing warm-ups. I have no idea why. I think it's seeing players in a short, unguarded moment. The Islanders dominated most of this game but lost, coming up short again during a dispiriting scoring drought. If this was my final visit to Nassau Coliseum, it was very much like many that preceded it; a fun time with friends despite a losing effort.
  • I took one last long look at the banners hanging from the rafters. Seeing the franchise’s glory years in banners has always been a special treat for me, even in the darkest times. It makes me think of how those seasons transpired or the careers of the retired players and can lead down a daydreaming rabbit hole (that, at least now, can be backed-up by places like YouTube and Hockey-Reference.com). I don’t say this condescendingly, but not a lot of teams have six great players whose numbers deserve to be retired, plus a host of others who can make strong cases to join them. And how many franchises can hang banners for a coach and GM and not look completely foolish? Here too, there have been changes in eras - Keith, Mike and I talked about what exactly a “Patrick Division Champions” banner entailed - but a team’s banner collection is like a dynamic history book written in colorful pictures. Islanders fans should appreciate these more, whether they hang at Barclays Center or Nassau Coliseum.
  • That carpet, though, should probably stay at the Coliseum. I’m pretty sure they’ve been using it since 1975.
  • Pat LaFontaine and friend Clinton Brown, who inspired LaFontaine to form his Companions in Courage organization, prepare to drop the opening puck with Islanders captain John Tavares and Minnesota captain Mikko Koivu.
  • Koivu is a classy dude.
  • You could call LaFontaine the Tavares of his era - both skilled centers and stars who were the offensive catalysts for the whole team - but that wouldn’t be 100% accurate. LaFontaine joined a four-time defending Cup champion with the expectation that he could keep the machine running. He did his part while the rest of the roster wasn’t ever good enough. Tavares was the first brick in a full rebuild; the entire franchise would be built around him almost from scratch. It’s taken five years of free agent tryouts, gambles, trades and drafts, but the Islanders have finally put together a team that can support him.
  • I wonder how many of the players (or how many of the fans, for that matter), really understand LaFontaine’s place in Islanders history as the first real Post-Dynasty superstar. I’ve always felt he meant the most to a very specific age group of Islanders fans who A. started following the team after the Cups, B. weren’t dismayed or turned off by his holding out in 1991 and C. didn’t fully give themselves over to pessimism regarding the team’s chances to win a championship until after he was gone. I remember being at the Islanders’ last LaFontaine Night in 2003, when he was voted into the Hall of Fame and the team celebrated him. There were people around me still holding his contract squabble (and, weirdly, his trade to the Rangers) against him even then. I didn’t really understand the animosity, because to lots of people my age, he was the first great Islander we saw at or near his height.
  • Look, I’ll be honest: the game finished 2-1 in a shootout, so none of these pictures will be of goals. But the Islanders blitzed the Wild in the first period, including this Frans Nielsen blast from the point.
  • Fun Fact: Every person sitting behind the Islanders bench in this picture has typed the words, "Fire Capuano" into one or more social media platforms in the last three seasons.
  • Tavares weaved through two Wild, drawing the crowd to its feet, but didn’t score. He would get the Islanders’ only goal of the game in the second period.
  • Hey, it's Sparky! He's obviously one of the Coliseum's more recent additions. Judging by the archival footage you see all the time, everybody at the Coliseum was a mascot in the old days. Every man, woman, child and usher in the building seemed to have a crazy hat or a sign or was just marching around clapping and cheering. The pride was strong back then, before years of losing, ownership turmoil and arena issues transformed almost the entire fanbase into a paranoid and perpetually pissed-off mob.
  • Believe it or not, this is not the part where Tavares scored. Generally, you don’t want to leave No. 91 open like this.
  • Charlie “Change Your Number” Coyle blocks a shot from Calvin deHaan.
  • Tavares was really on the entire game. Here’s a 2-on-1 with, I think, Brock Nelson that sadly didn’t amount to anything.
  • Johnny Boychuk's wind-up is also capable of making 16,000-plus people stand up in unison. No goal here, either.
  • Into overtime, Tavares had the Islanders’ best chances. I don’t know what Oilers fans are thinking about seeing Devan Dubnyk playing out of his mind like this. This is the living nightmare for fans of bad teams; giving away a guy for nothing, only to watch him go supernova while your shitty team is still trying to make a campfire in the rain by rubbing two sticks together. I went through a little of this during last year’s playoffs, when the world bowed at the feet of Nino Niederreiter during the Wild’s run to the second round. But what Dubnyk is doing right now is crazy and the Oilers will probably be looking for another starting goalie this summer.
  • On to the shootout, where Zach Parise scores the first and only goal for either team. The shot hit the post, bounced off of Jaro Halak’s leg and in. It was that kind of game; the Islanders did everything they could and the Hockey Gods laughed in their faces. In a single situation, hey no big deal, it happens. Late in the season in a race for playoff position and on a losing streak, it’s a crusher.
  • My deep dark secret: I don't mind shootouts. But I also root for a team with Frans Nielsen and Kyle Okposo on it, so there might be some coloration. I also liked ties back when they were considered victories for the Islanders, too.
  • I thought for sure Tavares, who was great all game, would tie it. He didn’t and that was the game.
  • It will be weird for the Coliseum to not be The Home of the Islanders, but it’s time to move on. For a minute, though, forget hockey. Nassau County doesn’t think enough of its citizens to keep their cultural and entertainment hub in working order, let alone in good enough shape for a professional sports team. They’re happy to raise taxes and blow hot air, but when it comes to actually giving back, the people in charge of Nassau and the Town of Hempstead are nowhere to be found. They waited for someone to come along and fix their problems for years and when someone actually offered to they said “err, no thanks.” It’s time the Islanders stop letting politicians and other interlopers dictate what they can and can’t do. The Barclays Center wants them and is paying to have them play there. That’s more than they’ve ever gotten from “Islanders Country” in 43 years.

I've said a few times that I don't remember a lot of details about my first Islanders game at Nassau Coliseum. One detail I do remember is Pat LaFontaine.

He was the hot player back then, and I clearly recall fans wearing his jersey and talking about him in the stands and amping up their excitement whenever he carried the puck. I have no idea if he scored in that game, or even if the Islanders won, but anyone getting that much attention - and with that cool a last name - had to be special.

Nobody could guess what would happen in the next few years: LaFontaine carrying some talent-deficient teams on his back, his holdout and trade to Buffalo, his concussions, his trade to the (ugh) Rangers and retirement after one final head injury. But he was a star then and only grew more famous over the seasons. To this day, he is my favorite hockey player of all time (and the sneakiest automatic player in the EA Sports NHL video game series).

So it's fitting that he be present at what could possibly be my last Islanders game at Nassau Coliseum, barring any charity playoff tickets. As part of the many, many cameo appearances of great Islanders throughout this season, LaFontaine took one final turn at center ice after burying the hatchet with management over the failed "front office by committee" gambit.

This being the NHL, there have been roughly four million changes to the game since LaFontaine's Islanders years. These days, LaFontaine is a man of many hats - founder of the Companions in Courage charity foundation, NHL big shot, speaker on the dangers of head injuries, dad of a young hockey player and beloved former player and U.S. Olympian. Thinking it over as the game went on, almost nothing about this evening mirrored my first games.

March of Time

The Islanders opponents, the Minnesota Wild, didn't exist back then. I don't think I ever saw the old North Stars play at the Coliseum and this was my first time seeing the Wild live. My single enjoyable Minnesota Wild memory involved some playful trash talk with an Avalanche fan friend back when Minnesota upset Colorado in the 2003 playoffs. I spent this game hoping to not see goals by former Islanders Thomas Vanek, Nino Niederreiter and pseudo-Islander Jared Spurgeon. (Thankfully, I didn't.)

There were no Ice Girls back then, either, so I wouldn't have unexpectedly run into two of them on the way to my seats, as Keith, Mike and I did before this game. Even if I did find myself in the same space with them when I was younger, I probably would have tried to crawl under the nearest seat.

The Islanders didn't have a mascot when LaFontaine played for them. At one point tonight, a giant fuzzy head with antlers emerged from the stairs right below me. It was Sparky, the Islanders ubiquitous and strangely controversial mascot, who had come to take some pictures with some delighted kids in our section. I tried to get a good, close-up picture of the dragon, but he was practically on top of me. I never minded Sparky (or his brand synergistic origins and different-colored arena football doppelganger), but he was never meant for me. I don't need cartoons to get me to enjoy a hockey game. But my daughter loves her stuffed Sparky doll and was very interested in him in the one game we got to earlier this season.

The game ended in a shootout, which LaFontaine never participated in (and geez, would he have been a killer at them). The Islanders lost this particular one, with the winner being scored by Zach Parise, who has some LaFontaine-esque qualities to him. An American, an Olympian, a captain, a fearless offensive player and a guy who gets praised for his attitude and work ethic as much as his point totals. I won't dwell too much on how Parise could have been an Islander, but I do think he would have been a popular one for the same reasons people gravitated to LaFontaine as the Dynasty guys retired or left.

A Different World

Throughout all of those changes, one bigger than the Islanders is what's really causing them to move. Contrary to widespread belief, the Islanders aren't leaving Nassau County because the Coliseum is old or small or smelly. Professional sports and the way we enjoy them has changed. A modest standalone arena, not owned by its main tenant, accessible only by car, with severely limited ancillary revenue streams and little to no room for expansion isn't enough any more. The days of piling in the station wagon, seeing a game, a getting home before the 11:00 news are over.

No team can live on that any more, if they ever could. So the Islanders will decamp for a modern building in a denser area and with a fat new revenue stream, hoping to enjoy at least some of the advantages their rivals have for years.

I'm not the same person I was when I first saw Pat LaFontaine play. I'm much older, happier and comfortable with myself than I ever have been. LaFontaine's not the same person he was then, transitioning from athletic competition to other, more important, battles. Hockey isn't the same. Life isn't the same.

Nassau Coliseum is the same, exactly the way it's home county wants it to stay.

It's high time for the Islanders to change.

___

Thanks to everyone for reading this series and taking this journey with me. I wasn't sure what these games would hold when the season started and what I would even write about. But each time, I found both old memories and new experiences that made my final trips to the Coliseum extra enriching. As always, there are things I wish I had done or thought about at the time, but I'll just add them to my trunk of mental souvenirs. The Islanders record in games I saw live this season was 2-4 and there's no guarantee I see any playoff games. But I'm satisfied that I can walk away from Nassau Coliseum without any unfinished business.

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