Nassau County
Where the Coliseum roared and four Cups were forged on Long Island.
Nassau County, on the eastern end of Long Island, is the spiritual home of the New York Islanders. From the franchise's 1972 expansion debut through the 2016–17 season, the team called the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale its fortress for 45 seasons. The Coliseum's concrete bowl, its echoing acoustics, and the fiercely loyal Long Island crowds that packed it night after night became inseparable from the identity of the Islanders organization.
After a brief sojourn in Brooklyn, the Islanders returned to Nassau County in 2021, settling into UBS Arena in Elmont. The county's deep hockey tradition—shaped by decades of Saturday-night games, schoolyard stick battles, and the memory of the four-peat—remains the emotional bedrock of the fanbase, binding generations of supporters to a place rather than merely a team.
Quick Facts
- Coliseum location
- Uniondale, Nassau County, New York
- Coliseum tenure
- 1972–2017 (45 seasons)
- Current arena
- UBS Arena, Elmont, Nassau County (opened 2021)
- Franchise origin
- NHL expansion team, 1972
- Defining rivalry
- New York Rangers (intra-New York rivalry)
Lore & Background
The Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum was no ordinary hockey rink. Built in the early 1960s as a multi-purpose venue, it acquired a second life when the NHL's 1972 expansion brought the Islanders to Uniondale. For nearly half a century, that concrete-and-steel bowl in the middle of Long Island's suburban sprawl became a cathedral. The acoustics were legendary—every slap shot, every goal horn, every roar from the upper deck bounced off the high walls and seemed to amplify the crowd's energy into something almost physical. Fans who grew up in the Coliseum often describe the smell of hot dogs and stale beer, the particular creak of the seats, the way the ice looked under the old lighting. It was not glamorous, but it was theirs.
The dynasty years (1980–1983) transformed that loyalty into something mythic. Mike Bossy's stride, Billy Smith's glove work, Denis Potvin's ferocity, Bryan Trottier's vision, Clark Gillies' two-way game—these were not just statistics but shared memories etched into the county's collective identity. When the Islanders lifted the Stanley Cup for the fourth straight time in 1983, the Coliseum erupted in a way that Long Island fans still describe in hushed, almost reverent tones. The four-peat remains an NHL record, and for Nassau County it is the single defining achievement of the franchise.
The departure from the Coliseum in 2017 and the subsequent years in Brooklyn created a wound in the fanbase that many still describe as a loss of home. The return to Elmont in 2021 with UBS Arena was bittersweet: a modern, gleaming arena in the same county, but a different building, different sightlines, different rituals. Yet the county's identity as the Islanders' home endured. The pride is geographic, generational, and stubbornly local—Long Islanders do not just follow a team; they defend a place.
Reader's Guide
Stand in the north end of the old Coliseum and you could feel the ice through the soles of your shoes on a cold January night. The concrete walls were close, the sightlines steep, and the crowd noise built in layers—first the low murmur of ten thousand Long Islanders settling in, then the rhythmic stomp of feet during a power play, then the full-throated roar that shook the upper deck when a goal went up. The smell was specific: hot-dog grease, cold beer, the faint chemical tang of Zamboni-melted ice drifting up from the rink.
In UBS Arena, Elmont, the experience is cleaner, louder by design, the sightlines wider. But the ritual persists. The pre-game chant, the Saturday-night pilgrimage from every borough and town across the county, the way a fan from Hempstead and a fan from Babylon will argue about line changes in the same parking lot like old neighbors. The pride is not just about winning; it is about belonging to a place that the league once told you was too small, too suburban, too far from Manhattan to matter. Nassau County proved them wrong, four times in a row, in a concrete bowl that smelled like hot dogs and history.
That is the pain and the pride: the team is yours because the ground is yours. You do not follow the Islanders to Brooklyn or to a neutral site. You follow them home, to the county, to the Long Island that raised them and still will not let them go.
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