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August 4, 2011
Sorry, Islanders: Brooklyn Nets arena still too small for hockey
Field of Schemes
by Neil deMause
Some cold water for the purveyors of "Brooklyn Islanders" nuttiness.
The only problem, as sharp-eyed FoS readers will remember (or as even dull-eyed Village Voice readers will, since I just wrote about it there on Tuesday): In order to save money, Brooklyn arena builder Bruce Ratner "value engineered" the Barclays Center to have a floor too small for hockey, essentially requiring that thousands of seats be ripped out to make room for a playing surface twice the length of a basketball court.
The Brooklyn Paper's headline was based on the same canned statement by Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark as I cited in my Voice piece.
...The Brooklyn Paper pegs the number of seats lost at 3,500 (no source given), which would give the arena the smallest capacity in the NHL. More to the point, as I noted in the Voice (thanks in part to a tip from an FoS reader), squeezing an NHL rink into a structure built for basketball could create some seriously ugly sightlines, as happened when the Phoenix Coyotes tried a similar scheme at America West Arena a bunch of years back.
Add in that the Islanders would be tenants of the Nets at the arena, and would probably be expected to pay rent (they'd be taking up nights that could otherwise be used for Lady Gaga shows and the like, after all), and it starts sounding like a less tempting opportunity.
...So: Brooklyn Islanders, possible? Yes. Likely? Unless both Charles Wang and the NHL decide that the Brooklyn market is so lucrative that it's worth playing in a substandard arena, don't hold your breath.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Hockey in Brooklyn? deMause sees through the hype
Posted by eric at August 4, 2011 11:54 AM