Remembering the Islanders' Home and Everything Else

"Gate 1 at 7:30 p.m."

Before mobile phones or text messaging or Facebook or SnapChat, teenagers had no choice but to make plans in advance. When I was a teenager on Long Island in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that meant a round of phone calls on a landline, changes and more changes in the school cafeteria, and negotiations with your parents on carpools and curfews.

There was one exception.

When the New York Islanders played a home game at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, no planning was necessary. Whoever had tickets to that game would meet at Gate 1 at 7:30 p.m., half an hour before the puck dropped at 8:00 p.m.. On any given night, there'd be at least three of us at Gate 1; on many nights there'd be more. A gaggle of teenagers in hockey sweaters and wool ski hats talking about how many goals Mike Bossy would score and what crazy thing goalie Billy Smith would do to annoy the opposing team. We'd meet at Gate 1, then walk counter-clockwise together until everyone reached their section.

The New York Islanders were born in 1972, as part of the National Hockey League's expansion from 14 to 16 teams. They were our team. It was right there in the name and logo. A team for folks who'd left Brooklyn and Queens and moved to Long Island for bigger houses and better schools. (In high school, I figured out that this migration east was as much about leaving the black inner city as it was about quarter-acre lots and manicured lawns. But that's a story for another day.) No longer did we need to schlep to the city to watch the Knicks, Rangers, Yankees, Mets, Jets or Giants.

Forty-three years later, the Coliseum is old, Brooklyn is hip, and the Islanders are leaving Long Island for the Barclays Center at the end of this season. On Saturday night, the Islanders will host the Washington Capitals in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series. With the Islanders trailing in the series three games to two, it may very well be the last home game for the Islanders on Coliseum ice.

It hasn't been that much fun for Islanders fans lately, but those early years were something to behold.

The Coliseum sits nearly dead center on a Nassau County map. Right off the Meadowbrook Parkway. No more than 30 minutes by car, even in traffic. A perfect suburban location with plenty of parking. It was originally conceived as part of a seven-building complex with affordable housing, a library, a civic center, and a sports arena, but those larger plans never came to fruition. Instead, we got a bare-bones indoor sports oval. Over the years, it came to be called The Barn or The Dump, but to me it was an intimate hockey arena with fantastic sight lines. For years, it was a second home.

Like many middle class families on Long Island, we had partial season tickets for the Islanders and for the New York Nets, who then played in the American Basketball Association and starred a guy named Julius Erving. The Nets won two ABA championships at the Coliseum, in the 1973-1974 season and again in 1975-1976, the last season before the ABA merged with the NBA. A year later, the Nets decamped for New Jersey, and the Coliseum became a full-time hockey haven.

Our season tickets were in section 115, row H, directly behind the visitors' bench. This is a current view from our seats (courtesy of the Coliseum website). You see the glass behind the visitors' bench? That wasn't there in the 1970s. It was added in the 1980's, I think, largely to protect players from unruly fans.

But in the 70s, it was the fans who needed protection from the players. This was the era of the Broad Street Bullies, the nickname bestowed on the Philadelphia Flyers for their aggressive of play. I can close my eyes and picture the petite woman who sat two rows in front of us standing on her chair, screaming every epithet then invented at the Flyers during a brawl on the ice, and some Flyers players deciding they'd heard enough and climbing over the bench and into the stands to take her on. I learned a lot about cursing and sexual positions during those games. I was 11 at the time. Maybe 12. I was hooked.

It wasn't all about hip checks and brawls, of course. The Islanders got pretty good pretty quickly. Three years in, they made the postseason. Seven years in, they posted the best record in the league. Eight years in, they were Stanley Cup champs. The rival New York Rangers hadn't won the Stanley Cup since 1940 but the Islanders were young and brash and fast and good.

They were also accessible. We'd see players at the mall, out for dinner, buying stuff at the sporting goods store. One player showed up to my friend's bar mitzvah. We built a bond—Long Island teenagers and cracked-tooth hockey players—and we rode that sweet connection through three more Stanley Cups.

I was at the Coliseum in May 1983 when the Islanders won their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup. It was the 17th, a Tuesday night, and I had my AP Physics exam the next day. We didn't have our seats that night, so a friend and I bought two tickets and sat in the upper deck. We started the night at Gate 1, walked counter-clockwise, found our seats, and watched history unfold.

When the celebration was over, we walked out of the Coliseum, found our car, and drove south on the Meadowbrook Parkway. The next month, we graduated from high school. By the fall, we'd all left for college.

The Islanders haven't won a Stanley Cup since.