Gary Bettman described himself as a "young lawyer" when he was at Nassau Coliseum to see the Islanders clinch their first Stanley Cup in 1980. Even then, the now NHL commissioner remembers thinking the barn was already outdated and "needed to be temporary."
"The fact is there are great memories at Nassau Coliseum but the due date has long expired," Bettman said on Wednesday after touring under-construction UBS Arena at Belmont Park with Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky and Tim Leiweke, the CEO of developer Oak View Group. "It was well past time to move on."
Wednesday marked Bettman’s first visit to the Islanders’ $1.