The Islanders are moving back to Long Island sooner than expected — and taxpayers are footing the bill.
The team will play nearly half of its home games over the next three seasons at the Nassau Coliseum, its former home, while the new Belmont Park arena is being built, after the state agreed to cough up $6 million to get the just-renovated “Old Barn” back up to NHL standards, Gov. Cuomo announced Monday.
“Changes that the NHL requires will be made. The number of games the Islanders will play at the Coliseum over the next three years will be split between Barclays, half and half,” Cuomo said.
The team was previously slated to stick it out at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for at least another season, but sources previously told The Post that the company that owns both sports complexes — helmed by Russian oligarch and Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov — was pushing for dual custody.
The team will play only 12 games at the Coliseum in the 2018-19 season and then split its games between Nassau and Kings counties for the next two years of construction, officials said. The Belmont Park arena won’t be ready until 2021-22.
The Islanders are slated to play a total of 48 games at the Coliseum over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. The club’s co-owner, Jon Ledecky, said it would be up to the NHL as to how the schedule, including potential playoff games, would be determined between the two sites.
“I think it’s exciting,” Islanders captain John Tavares told reporters after Monday’s press conference at the Coliseum. “Obviously, this place means a lot to the organization and our fans, and to us as players, including myself. So many great memories here. It’ll be great to be able to come back here. No doubt, I think it’s a positive thing for everybody.”
The Isles left the Coliseum for Brooklyn in 2015 when the arena began a $165 million makeover that focused more on concerts than sports, but the team was never a hit in Kings County, and ticket sales have been low.
Now, less than a year after the Coliseum reopened, the state will pay to make it game-worthy again, investing in “ice plant redundancy and dehumidification, and media and broadcast cabling infrastructure,” according to a release.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman — who had said the Isles wouldn’t return to the Coliseum and was still taking potshots at the arena just days ago — appears to have had a sudden change of heart.
“As the Islanders create a magnificent new home for their future at Belmont, the NHL supports the measures taken to allow the Islanders’ part-time, temporary return to the site of their dynastic glory,” he said in a statement Monday.
Cuomo claimed Bettman came around thanks to his “charm.”
“I gave him a little goading, a little suggestion that maybe flexibility would be nice and little pressure mixed with charm. Little more pressure,” he said during his press conference. “And that it would be nice if we could work it out. Well, we worked it out.”
The news will likely be welcomed by many fans, who have long bemoaned Barclays Center for its poor views, dangerously steep nosebleed section and for simply not being in the team’s heartland of Long Island.
While the club won’t be making a full-time return to its former home of 43 years — in an effort to maintain a max-cap team, with the revenue brought in from suites and club seats at Barclays Center — the move will be yet another element for Tavares to consider in his pending free agency.
“Everything that goes into my daily life will impact my decision,” Tavares said. “I think I’ve said in the past, the Islanders belong on Long Island.”