UNIONDALE, N.Y. — The first $17 can of beer hit the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum ice roughly 20 seconds after New York Islanders forward Anthony Beauvillier‘s overtime goal.
Then another. Then another. Then what seemed like an entire brewery’s inventory landed on the ice as the Islanders mobbed the overtime hero at the end of Game 6 of their Stanley Cup semifinal series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“The building coming into overtime smelled like cigarettes, and now it smells like beer,” Beauvillier said jokingly afterward.
As the Islanders celebrated Wednesday night, the cans kept flying. Some had enough liquid inside of them that it sprayed out like a comet’s tail on the way to the ice. Others exploded on impact, leaving yellow streaks on the pristine sheet. The sight of trash being hurled onto the ice at the end of an NHL game usually signifies that a hated rival was victorious or that the fans were enraged by shoddy officiating. Yet here, euphoria was the catalyst for the littering.
“Yeah, that was amazing,” Islanders star Mathew Barzal said with a slight chuckle. “In overtime, I’ve never seen anything like that. A little dangerous, but you don’t see that too often, so we embraced it. That’s the Islanders faithful. They’re passionate. They get excited. It was good stuff.”
Nassau Coliseum ice is being showered in beer cans in celebration. #TBLvsNYI pic.twitter.com/BAqs2en9pj
— Bryan Burns (@BBurnsNHL) June 24, 2021
It was also surreal, with the benefit of hindsight, because Beauvillier’s goal is expected to be the last one ever scored by an Islanders player at Nassau Coliseum — almost 49 years after Billy Harris netted the first one on Oct. 12, 1972. This was the team’s last season at the Coliseum. The Islanders are moving to a new building starting in the 2021-22 season: UBS Arena, a state-of-the-art facility built next to Belmont Park racetrack.
It was as if with every can that hit the ice, the fans were “pouring one out” for the old hockey barn, even if they didn’t know that was the case at the time.
“We really believed we were going to win a Cup and give Nassau Coliseum one last dance. We kind of felt like the stars were aligning. For it to end so abruptly, you don’t see it coming,” winger Matt Martin told WFAN on Monday, three days after the Islanders were eliminated by the Lightning in Game 7.
The Coliseum — or “the Coli” as the Islanders players refer to it — opened on Feb. 11, 1972. It underwent a major renovation in 2017, dropping its capacity to 13,917 and giving the fading star a face-lift. But it was still the Coliseum.
When walking up the stairs to the diminutive press box at Nassau Coliseum, your eyes meet a sign that reads “DANGER: ASBESTOS … May Cause Cancer … Causes Damage To Lungs.” By the third or fourth such sign you see inside the building, it’s somehow both jarring and part of the charm.
It still has a metal facade that makes the arena look like an artisan colander or an exotic garden tool; one concourse that spans the arena, dotted by no-frills concessions stands labeled “Food And Drink” like the government was managing them; and the massive parking lot that harkened back to an era when arenas weren’t meant to be centerpieces of mixed-use land projects.
It was truly an old barn. But once, it was a new barn.
“The first time I laid eyes on it, it was just magical for me,” Islanders legend Bryan Trottier told ESPN recently.
No one tallied more points at Nassau than Trottier (757), who was an integral part of the team’s four-Stanley Cup dynasty in the early 1980s. They won three of those Cups on the ice at the Coliseum, which doubled as the launching point for their championship parties with the fans.
“We thought we celebrated really hard with our fans. That’s what I really remember,” Trottier recalled. “It had all the flavor of Long Island and the people. I thought they were pretty special and unique in a sense. It was no ticker-tape kind of thing, but it was unique in the sense that we were able to celebrate our little tails off and no one complained. Everybody had a better time than the next guy.”
What was true for the dynasty was still true in 2021: Nassau Coliseum was a character in the Islanders’ 2021 playoff drama. The team wasn’t unbeatable at home; it went 6-3 overall there this postseason. But unbridled enthusiasm of the crowd and the sheer volume of their chants and cheers were as much factors today as they were in the dynasty years, according to Trottier.
“We loved our crowd. We loved our building, and we loved the noise and the atmosphere. I think we all responded to it. The fans did; the players did,” said the Hall of Famer, who has turned some of his great Islanders moments into NFTs.
The 2021 run put the Nassau Coliseum experience in the spotlight after the Islanders advanced to the Eastern Conference finals in the Canadian pandemic bubble last summer. Those tuning in to watch them take out the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins before meeting the Tampa Bay Lightning heard a crowd that was as loud as it was creative.
Watching an Islanders game at Nassau is the closest thing in the NHL to experiencing the crowd at a European soccer match with the sheer amount of organic chanting that occurs. In the 2021 playoffs, Islanders fans would:
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Chant “Barry! Barry!” as coach Barry Trotz and his staff shuffled down the ice to the bench.
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Chant individual players’ names after big defensive plays (“Matty Mar-tin!”), like the Bleacher Creatures at Yankees Stadium trying to get an outfielder’s attention.
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Sing Jean-Gabriel Pageau‘s name to “Ole!”, which was borrowed from the Ottawa Senators‘ fans.
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Add an “Ilya Sorokin!” chant with drum thumps, borrowed from the KHL.
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Give a “Hooooooo!” chant that would rise up when the Islanders would start buzzing on the forecheck.
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For their masterpiece, deliver the “Hey, Josh Bailey” chant, set to the 1961 pop hit “Hey! Baby” by Bruce Channel. “I wanna know-ow-ow-ow … will you score a goal?”
“When the fans start going, ‘Hey, oh, Josh Bailey’ it was amazing. Really cool,” said Sorokin, a rookie who made the jump from Russia to the NHL this season. “I’m really happy I came here to play under the Islanders flag.”
Thomas Baffi is standing near an Islanders flag, within eyeshot of the Coliseum. He’s at a tailgate party in the parking lot of the Marriott hotel, located on the other side of a chain-link fence from the arena parking lot. It’s a legendary haunt for those visiting the Coli — from media to musicians to pro wrestlers.
Baffi, nicknamed “The Coach,” is firing up fans on a megaphone before an Islanders playoff game as they munch on burgers and sip beverages. “Since I was a kid, I could always remember tailgate parties being a part of the sport,” said Baffi, who estimates he has seen over 1,000 games at Nassau since his brother Robert took him to his first one as a 5-year-old in 1975. “It’s my home away from home. I’ve grown up here. I love it here. There is no building louder than the old barn. It’s the perfect place to come watch a hockey game. And the sightlines are perfect too.”
Like so many Islanders fans, his relationship to the Coliseum is tied to the franchise’s dynastic years in the 1980s. He remembers watching Stanley Cup parades down nearby Hempstead Turnpike, ones that stood in stark contrast with the ticker-tape parades held for special occasions in Manhattan.
“It was such a family, community type of championship. It wasn’t a produced, 3-million-people parade in New York City. It was local people together, celebrating the Islanders, who made our community so proud,” he said. “I love it here. I’m really going to miss it.”
Alex Klein from Roslyn, New York, is tossing a ball with his son before an Islanders playoff game in the Coliseum parking lot. He rode his bike from Great Neck to watch the Islanders parades. He brought his son to a playoff game so he could understand what Nassau meant to the fan base.
“There’s so much history here. It’s our home. Inside, you feel it with the fans. The place shakes. The place erupts,” Klein said. “I brought him here because he has to experience it to move on. You hear people who are interviewed, and they say that this is a third and fourth generation of people that they’re bringing. I’m thankful enough that I can have him experience this. He’ll go to Belmont. He’ll see the difference. Hopefully someday he’ll bring his kids.”
UBS Arena will be the third arena the Islanders have called home in the past decade. For a while it felt like the Islanders had more stalled arena projects than playoff appearances. Then in 2012, the Islanders signed a 25-year lease to play at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where the NBA’s Nets relocated from New Jersey to play. They moved there for the 2015-16 season.
The problems with Barclays were legion and legendary. Fans who drove to games at Nassau Coliseum had difficulty getting to games, both due to clogged roads and a lack of parking. The same problem impacted players, as the Islanders’ practice rink and their homes were back toward the Coliseum.
Then there was the fan experience: Barclays is a gorgeously designed building — for concerts and basketball. For NHL games, the scoreboard wasn’t centered along the ice. Some seats could only see two-thirds of the rink. To fill a gap between the boards and the seats, the Islanders parked an SUV from a local car dealership on an elevated platform in clear view of TV cameras during games.
“I did not like Brooklyn, but I appreciated what it did,” Baffi said. “Without them, and without Mr. Charles Wang [the former Islanders owner], we would not have kept this team here. We’d probably be in Quebec right now. So Barclays has a special place because it saved the Islanders. It allowed them to stay here.”
In the end, that was Brooklyn’s legacy: It was the home the Islanders needed in that moment, when Nassau was untenable and their permanence in the New York market was tenuous.
“I went to Brooklyn,” Klein said. “I hated every single minute of it. I hated standing at the train platform. I hated driving to the train station. I hated the train ride there. Even when we were in the playoffs those years. It wasn’t a hockey arena. Thankfully, it allowed us to stay here, which is the good thing. It was a means to an end for Belmont.
“But it wasn’t home. It never felt like home. [Nassau] is our home.”
Stan Fischler has spent many a night at Nassau Coliseum.
Nicknamed “The Maven,” the 89-year-old hockey historian was a mainstay on local NHL broadcasts in New York, working the intermission reports during Islanders, Rangers and New Jersey Devils games.
“When Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum opened, it gave the new franchise the same legitimacy that the Rangers and other established — including Original Six — teams already had; plus the subsequent growing years enhanced the image both of the arena and the hockey club,” he explained to ESPN via email.
“What made the Coliseum so significant to the team was its magnificence as a place to watch hockey. It was best summed up by NHL president Clarence Campbell when he visited it for the first time in 1973. He looked up, down and sideways and said, ‘The sight lines are magnificent. There isn’t a bad seat in the house and it’s a perfect place to see a hockey game.'”
Campbell put the Coliseum on the same level as the venerable Maple Leaf Gardens, which was considered the template for the ideal hockey arena back in the day.
“The hockey bromide ‘play it simple’ could be applied to the Coli. Its beauty was in its simple functional design which is precisely what the Islanders were as they became the first and only NHL dynasty in America,” Fischler noted. “Simply but solidly constructed from top to bottom. The arena was classy in its down-to-earth simplicity. And in this case, simplicity equaled excellency.”
Just like the parade down the turnpike wasn’t like a parade in Manhattan, the Coliseum wasn’t Madison Square Garden. The building, in so many ways, matched the aesthetic of being an Islanders fan: rough around the edges, uncomplicated, shabby but not chic and — of course — very loud.
But it also served as their Mecca. It’s the place where 18 championship banners hung with those for eight retired player numbers, a coach, a general manager, and sold-out show streaks for native son Billy Joel and The Grateful Dead. (The latter one was tie-dyed.) It was a temple honoring the franchise’s greatest moments.
“Nassau Coliseum reflected the splendor of its glory years. I love that building for that. It just resonated Long Island. The fans identified with it. The players identified with it,” Trottier said. “I don’t know how to put that into words, except to say that no matter how it feels to somebody in a special way, they should hold on to it. It’s got some great memories for a lot of people. If you add them all up, that building is worth its weight in gold.”
Was the Game 6 win over the Lightning truly the final Islanders home game at Nassau?
“I feel like we’ve had a couple of these where it was the last time we were going to play there,” the winger Bailey said jokingly.
Only Trottier and Denis Potvin played more homes games for the Islanders than Bailey (461), who’s been with the team since 2008. He started his career at the Coli. He played through the collapse of the Lighthouse Project for a new arena, rumors of a new building at Citi Field that never came to pass, and further rumors that the team could relocate to places like Kansas City or Quebec. He moved from Nassau to Barclays Center and back to a renovated Coliseum.
He has seen some things.
“It was a good run. I think it’s a special building for our fans, for this organization. It’s meant so much for us to play there. But you turn the page and move forward,” he said. “We’re looking forward to moving over to UBS.”
Coach Trotz and general manager Lou Lamoriello helped design the new UBS Arena, giving their input on what they’d like to see in the player facilities. Trotz was also excited to see the inclusion of a large bar that’s open to the public in the end zone of the arena, saying he hopes they decorate it with flags and banners to give it a European stadium feel — a perfect place for chanting, obviously.
But throughout the Islanders’ last run at Nassau Coliseum, Trotz acknowledged how much the old barn motivated his team. In some ways, he saw it as a barometer for normalcy as the NHL played through a season that was truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Every postseason round saw more fans in the building, all of them believing that this Islanders team could be the one to capture that elusive fifth banner.
“The Coliseum was filling up. You could see the emotion and the belief filling up for our team in the room and outside of the room in our fan base,” Trotz said.
He felt the playoff run was bigger than just what was happening on the ice.
“I’ve used the term ‘medicine.’ For this area. For the fan base. For this pandemic year as we’ve gone through it. It was great medicine. It was great memories,” Trotz said. “Right now with the Coliseum, the last game played there was a tremendous overtime winner against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6. Everyone will remember that.”
Trotz received a call from his sister the day after his team lost Game 7 in Tampa, Florida, seeking to console him after the heartbreaking elimination. She had the television tuned to a replay of Game 6, listening to Islanders fans singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” as they had done many times in the postseason at the Coliseum.
“She’s Canadian, and she had tears in her eyes. She said it was phenomenal,” he said. “Those are experiences that you live through. We were living in that moment. And there were some good moments. [Ones] that should get you excited about the future, and the moments you can create going forward.”
UBS Arena isn’t the Coliseum. Nothing will ever be the Coliseum.
But what a glorious send-off the 2021 playoffs were for the old barn.
“OK, we got Belmont. Great. It’s terrific, it’s brand new, it’s nice and shiny,” said Klein, as he tosses the ball to his son in the parking lot. “But we won our Cups here. Our history is here. It’s psychotic here during a playoff game. I don’t think there’s any other venue that exists on this planet [like the Coliseum]. This is part of who we are. Part of our fabric. But we close a chapter, and we open another.”