Charles Wang's Lighthouse Project appears dead, which has lead to more baseless but predictable mentions of KC as a potential landing spot for the Islanders. To me there is zero link between the Islanders and KC at the moment, but it's made enough noise on the intertubes I figured I'd toss up some links.
It's true Wang was mentioning KC as a bargaining ploy a year ago, but to his credit, he hasn't brought up KC once since the preseason game last September that I'm aware of. (Perhaps he wasn't pleased that we didn't play along with a big turnout for the game.) Wang bought the Islanders because he loves Long Island, not because he loved hockey. By his own admission, he didn't know much about hockey when he bought the team. I can see him selling the team, but I can't see him moving the team out of the NYC area. Oh, and the Isles' lease at their current arena doesn't expire until 2015.
Linkage:
Report: NY Islanders Keeping KC As A Backup Plan (the interview with Chris Botta on that page is worth a listen)
Kansas City Reportedly Remains An Option For The NHL's NY Islanders
Is Kansas City a Plan B if NY Islanders' Lighthouse Project falls through?
KC Still In Mix For Islanders? Doubtful
Why Not KC For The NHL?
2 comments:
Take a look at this article from May of this year:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100512&content_id=9988596&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
I find it very interesting that the Mets baseball team might pitch in to help the Islanders and personally, I think there's a good chance it might happen.
After all, ask yourself this, if you were from Long Island, where would you take the Islanders? To Queens? Or to Kansas City?
Exactly.
I don't see Charles Wang selling the team anytime soon for the same reasons why fellow bad sports owner Chris Cohan held on to the Warriors for over 15 years. I also don't see Wang moving the team to the Nets new Barclays Center building in Brooklyn either, because he doesn't want to play second fiddle to the Nets (ala the Phoenix Coyotes moving to Glendale so they don't have to play second fiddle to the Suns). But I can see Wang teaming up with the Mets in order to get his new arena which I think would be pretty cool. Cities outside of the New Jersey/New York metro area are a last resort once Wang has runned out of options.
But don't despair! It just means Kansas City will get someone else!
Here, read this article that I posted elsewhere on this excellent blog:
http://kcnhl.blogspot.com/2009/04/welcome-to-puckchasercom.html
I guarantee you that Kansas City will have one of those teams in less than ten years.
Keep up the good work Aaron and soon Kansas City will be greatly rewarded!
I think the chances of the team playing some games at the new Nets arena being built in downtown Brooklyn (just a block or 2 away from 1 terminating point of the Long Island Railroad) are pretty decent. Even if it's on a half time basis, as to get a fire lit under Nassau County's ass...
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