Islanders move to Brooklyn largely under the radar: Cox

So much noise these days surrounds possible NHL expansion to Las Vegas, not to mention the potential relocation of the Florida Panthers, not to mention the next step in the never-ending saga of the Arizona Coyotes as they continue to wander in the desert.

Make no mistake about it — the NHL is a stable league, as stable as it’s been since, well, probably since it decided to grow from a six-team league. But there are some franchise uncertainties, and there are constant discussions and rumours about teams on the move and expansion.

Which makes the quiet (shhhhhh!) relocation of the New York Islanders that much stranger.

Quiet, of course, lies in the ears of the beholder, or something like that. In Uniondale and Suffolk County, home of most Islander fans, this is anything but quiet. Their favourite team, which hasn’t won a playoff series since 1993, is finally looking like a team to be taken seriously again, but is leaving the suburbs next season for gentrifying Brooklyn.

Upset and angry would probably describe most of them. Frustrated, too.

If there’s a comparable situation in NHL history, it would be that of the Quebec Nordiques, who were horrible for years and then, just as all those draft picks or the players acquired for those draft picks started maturing, they bundled up their goods and headed to Denver.

But there was a lot of noise about that, as there was surrounding the move of the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix. Even the relocation/dismemberment of the Minnesota North Stars — half the team became San Jose Sharks, the other have became Stars in Dallas — was both controversial and hotly debated.

The Islanders to Brooklyn? Not so much, by comparison. It’s just kind of happening. Nothing like Jim Balsillie’s blustery attempt to move Phoenix to Hamilton, or the collapse of the Atlanta Thrashers and subsequent shift to Manitoba.

It’s almost like Gary Bettman has said so many times he doesn’t like relocating franchises that he’s cleverly convinced the hockey world the Islanders aren’t moving, but merely moving neighbourhoods. Or going to a new arena just around the corner so close the Islander fans will follow them (of course!) and be happier for it.

Which is sort of true. Truthy, as Stephen Colbert might say.

I don’t pretend to understand New York and it’s boroughs, and how they relate, and how those boroughs interact as part of or separate from Long Island.

But Brooklyn sure isn’t Uniondale, and while the Long Island Railroad may be able to haul fans from Suffolk County to the Islanders’ new rink at the Barclays Centre, it’ll be as convenient as living in downtown Ottawa and driving to see the Senators in Kanata.

The Islanders, 21-10 and second in the Metropolitan Division heading into Friday night’s game in Detroit, are moving, plain and simple. Relocating after 42 years and counting, and certainly encroaching a bit more on the territory of the Rangers, who probably don’t really care.

Whether this will be good for the Islanders or the NHL, well, we’ll see. They’ll be tenants at Barclays just as they were tenants at the Nassau County Coliseum from 1972 until now. They say revenues will be enhanced, and the expectation is that fans will want to see the Isles and John Tavares play in greater numbers than the average of 14,126 fans (27th in the NHL) that see them now, down from 14,740 last season.

That’s well up, however, from the 11,059 average in the 2010-11 season (30th overall), and it sure seems clear Islander fans were slowly warming up to a team that has missed the playoffs seven out of the last nine years but has both accumulated a horde of young players and — listen up, Oiler management — developed them patiently through their Bridgeport farm affiliate.

But owner Charles Wang could never get his Lighthouse Project off the ground, and instead decided Brooklyn would be his team’s new home while at the same time he sold most of it for $485 million (he bought it in 2000 for $130 million) to a pair of businessmen who will become majority owners of the team in its second year in Flatbush.

The Isles have a lease at Barclays, which is owned by Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov and minority owner Bruce Ratner. Oddly enough, Ratner is spearheading a $229-million renovation of the rink in Uniondale, and says he has a deal that will see the Isles play there six times a season.

This is a convoluted business, and former Islander great Clark Gillies mused a little while ago about maybe the Isles moving back to Uniondale one day.

Relocations, needless to say, have been part of the Bettman administration’s time in office. Maybe the Nords and Jets moved too easily, and the commish made up for that by holding a hard line in Edmonton, in Phoenix, in Nashville.

When they’ve happened, they’ve been dramatic and usually traumatic.

But not with the Islanders, at least not to anyone out of Suffolk County. A team that joined the league with Atlanta and saw teams come and go in that southern city not once but twice while they held fast finally was ripped from its moorings.

The Isles became famous in the early 1990s, but have mostly just been sad this century. Until now, that is, and now they’ll soon be Islanders no more, at least not the same Islanders.

Quietly, hockey history is being written, and a hockey town is being left behind.

Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column will appear here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.