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New York Islanders' Nassau Coliseum is the last barn in major American sports
By Ben Osborne
FOX Sports Senior Features Editor
When you truly love a sport, seeing a "big game" live is a no-brainer.
If the stakes are high and the atmosphere is right, a game can be incredibly fun, even if you're not that invested in the result. It's the atmosphere that's key.
I found myself in such a situation last week, a long-time New York Ranger fan (but, importantly, a hockey fan just as long) walking into Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum for Game 6 of the Eastern Division finals between the host New York Islanders and the visiting Boston Bruins.
And let me tell you: those folks had the atmosphere right, and the building, the old "Barn" itself, was a big reason.
The fun started outside. The sprawling parking lot, dropped in the heart of suburban Nassau County, felt more like an NFL lot. There have been many stadiums and arenas for city teams built in the burbs over the years, for better or worse. I’m not sure there’s another example in the big four American sports where a franchise itself was actually created for a suburb. Tailgating, music and happy vibes abounded.
The low-slung building got a minor facelift a few years ago but still looks, well, small, especially in an era of monster-size arenas accommodating giant luxury boxes.
We grabbed some beers and went to our seats. We were in the third-to-last row at the end of the rink. Too bad, right? Not at all! The third-from-last row felt super close. And because of the sloped roof, we were too "high" to see much of the video scoreboard. Nothing to do but just watch hockey.
"There are no bad sightlines at the Coliseum," Islanders/NHL Historian Stan "The Maven" Fischler told FOX Sports. "And all the seating is just right for the type of noise you heard."
Indeed, for as cool as the look of the building and as purely thrilling as it is to see crisp playoff hockey live without distraction, the noise took the experience to another level.
An Islanders staff member told me that during a commercial break in the third period, as the Islanders were putting the finishing touches on a 6-2 win that ended the series, the sound exceeded 110 decibels. This was the highest they’ve recorded during the playoffs and well above the 85 dB level that can lead to hearing loss if you're exposed to it too often.
It wasn’t just one extra-loud explosion, either. From the moment the Islanders took the ice until they walked off, gesturing happily to the fans after the traditional end-of-series handshake, the din was steady. If I wanted to talk to my buddy anytime we were in there, except maybe between periods, I had to yell.
And this was with a reduced capacity of just 12,000 due to COVID-19 restrictions!
Back in my regular life far from Long Island, my ears were ringing for a solid 48 hours after the game. And when they weren’t ringing, I kept hearing the song the Islanders play when the game ends in my head, an absolute classic from Maxine Nightingale.
Between the screaming fans and some well-chosen tracks, ("Black Skinhead" before the puck dropped; "Seven Nation Army" deployed throughout; "Our House" late in the game), there was also extensive organ playing by the Islanders’ longtime organist, Paul Cartier.
I have been to a ton of big games in all four major American sports and I’m not sure I’ve been to one that had a more entertaining package than what I experienced last week.
It was my first indoor game since the Big East Tournament on March 11, 2020, aka The Day The Sports World Stopped, and this was a welcome return.
But thanks to the Coliseum, this game would have felt special no matter when it happened.
I understand owners need bigger buildings with bigger luxury boxes and all that, so when old barns get retired, they won’t be back.
And that’s pretty much where we’re at with the NHL and NBA. The only active NHL arena older than Nassau Coliseum, which was built in 1972, is Madison Square Garden, which has been around at its current address since 1968 and is of course awesome, but went through extensive renovations a few years ago that makes it feel quite new. The next oldest, I was frankly shocked to learn while doing this story, is the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta; the Flames home since 1983. No other buildings even date to the ’80s.
NBA arenas as a collective are even newer, with the Timberwolves’ Target Center (1990) the second-oldest after MSG.
Major League Baseball (Wrigley, Fenway, Dodger Stadium) and the National Football League (OGs like Lambeau and Soldier plus 70s classics in Buffalo, Kansas City and New Orleans) still offer some gems that are worth a visit, but it’s hard to call massive, 40-80 thousand-seat structures "barns."
And look, it’s not like the Islanders' various owners over the years even wanted to be around this long. The franchise flirted at various times with other locations on Long Island and even considered leaving the New York area altogether.
"I covered the team since the mid-70s, so I was on top of all the moving stories," said the 89-year-old Fischler, who still covers the sport and team via The Fischler Report and Maven's Haven. "As the building got older, there was a clamor to have it renovated, expanded or build a new one, but it always got bogged down by bickering politicians. Then the feeling was that they would get the hell out of the metropolitan area and move to somewhere like Houston or Kansas City – places that wanted a team."
There was also a short-lived stint at Barclays Center in Brooklyn which failed because the Isles’ fan base preferred staying out in the burbs, and because, well, it was so clearly a basketball arena.
In the meantime, the Isles kept circling back to the classic old building on Hempstead Turnpike. They’ve also come up with a resolution, in the form of the new UBS Arena that will open next season in nearby Elmont, NY.
"When the Coliseum opened, the President of the NHL, Clarence Campbell, visited and said, ‘This is the best place to watch a hockey game.’ And I know of a couple of club owners who built their arenas based on the pure noise that they’d heard inside the Coliseum," Fischler recalled. "Now, the team is learning a lot from what the Coliseum gave them. [UBS Arena] will probably be the best rink in the league."
Whether you can get out to the Island for a game (the Islanders host the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals tonight; if they advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, they could have anywhere from two to six home games left at the Coliseum, ever) or just watch on TV, try and pay your respects.
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I had been at the game purely as a fan, but when I raved to my boss about how amazing it was, he told me I should write an "Old to Ode Barns" piece.
It turns out there’s only one barn left.
Ben Osborne is a Senior Features Editor for FOX Sports and the former Editor-in-Chief for SLAM and Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @bosborne17.
