Now, a whole NHL franchise might be a pending free agent.
As the rift between the Islanders and their home arena, Barclays Center, evidently is getting wider, the team is being courted from many angles. Now in its second season in Brooklyn, the team can opt out of its 25-year lease as soon as after next season, while the arena can opt out as soon as the end of the 2018-19 season.
Both sides are contractually obliged to enter an attempted negotiation before opting out.
If the Islanders’ first-year majority owners, Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin, want to build a new arena, that might leave them with a year in limbo before it’s ready.
Now, the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, along with Hartford mayor Luke Bronin, sent a letter to Ledecky and Malkin offering the city’s XL Center as a possible landing spot. The arena currently houses the Rangers’ AHL affiliate, the Wolf Pack, and has a capacity of 16,294, almost 1,000 seats more than currently offered at Barclays Center.
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A business group near their old home at Nassau Coliseum, called the Long Island Association, also is joining the mix. They wrote a letter to the state agency, Empire State Development, hoping to garner some help with bringing the Isles back to the Coliseum.
The old barn just went through a $130 million renovation, done by Bruce Ratner’s company — which used to partially own and operate Barclays. The new layout currently can hold 13,000 for hockey, but, with the microphone of the county politicians, they have claimed that it’s easy to add at least another 2,000 seats — which still likely wouldn’t be enough to have the league sign off on a return.
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