You Can’t Go Home Again
The first thing I notice is the ice. Gone is the “Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum” that used to go around the Islanders’ logo. Even though the building technically has kept that name, it’s proper moniker is NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. It’s a mouthful. And it doesn’t taste good.
This was the Islanders first game back at a refurbished Coliseum since they moved to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center two years ago. It was just an exhibition game with the Flyers, a little pre-season offering that the owners of the Coliseum held out to us hockey starved island dwellers like a tasty little morsel.
I bit, of course.
I haven’t been to Barclays to see the Islanders yet. Maybe that makes me a bad fan. I have my reasons. I’ll leave it at that. But I’ve missed the Islanders, I’ve missed seeing live hockey, and when the tickets for this meaningless game went on sale, I grabbed at them. I was hungry for hockey and the Coliseum is literally a five minute drive from my house. No train. No changing at Jamaica. Just a quick little jaunt to a place that I once called my home away from home.
Except it’s not anymore. It’s redone and it’s ugly and I don’t like it, despite there being more bathroom stalls. It was still as claustrophobic and confining as the old place, the lines still long, the cement stairs still steep, the arena area itself much smaller. Our seats were obstructed and we couldn’t see the scoreboard, leaving us in a weird zone where we had no idea how much time was left in the period.
This place wasn’t meant for hockey.
Which is all well and good, as there’s no hockey team that has to play there. But the small talk of the people around me and the chants of “BRING THEM BACK!” lead me to believe that there are people who still believe in the great myth of the Islanders coming back to the Coliseum.
It’s not happening, I wanted to yell at the people in front of me, excitedly talking about the fans showing enough support to convince whoever needs convincing that the team should come back. It’s not happening, I wanted to yell to the guy next to me who kept instigating the “BRING THEM BACK” chant, saying this was their rightful home. It’s not happening, I wanted to shout to the several thousand other people chanting along.
The thing is, it just didn’t feel right to me. Despite the logo on the ice, despite the sea of Islander jerseys and shirts around me, despite the team actually playing the game, it didn’t feel like they had come home. It felt like exactly what it was — an exhibition. A one-off.
Oh, I enjoyed the game. It was good to see them again. It was good to watch live hockey again. It was good to tailgate in the parking lot and listen to the fans in their cars doing the Islander beep and see joyful little kids in their Ho Sang and Tavares jerseys. But it wasn’t the same. And I didn’t expect it to be, but I didn’t expect it to feel so foreign, either. I wasn’t fooling myself and the packed arena doing their ritual woo and yes, yes, yes after each goal wasn’t fooling me. The Islanders are far removed from being tenants of the Coliseum and this game, while fun for nostalgia’s sake, only served to make me realize that this really was no longer a place they could call home. It has ceased to be the Coliseum, ceased to be the home of the Islanders. And until I read a Newsday article with sources saying they’re going to build a new arena in Elmont, Brooklyn is their home. But unlike the Coliseum of yore, it’s not mine. It will never be. And neither will NYCB Live.
The Isles won in overtime today, with Tavares scoring 34 seconds into overtime for the winning goal. We cheered. We cheered not just for the win, but for the team itself, for their brief moment on Long Island ice, for everything they’ve done for us, for the future games a lot of us won’t be at.
Maybe it’s time for me to get on that train to Brooklyn.
