It’s a Friday night at the end of March, and I’m at Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport watching the Islanders make a late-season run at the playoffs.
The crowd looks probably about how you’d imagine: some crazy hockey fans in their jerseys and foam fingers, some families out on a weekend night for some relatively affordable entertainment, lots of little kids more interested in their cotton candy than the hockey game going on in front of them.
The attendance is reported as about 3,800, which doesn’t come close to filling the 10,000-seat arena.
But looking around, you wouldn’t necessarily know that these Islanders are nearing the end of their last season in Bridgeport. There are still ads up trying to sell you season ticket packages. And I haven’t heard anyone in the crowd or at concessions or anywhere mention the impending move, even as the visiting Laval Rocket goes up 2-1 in the second period, which makes the Islanders’ postseason hopes — and the hope of some extra home games — just slightly less likely.
Appearances inside the arena aside, the news that the Islanders are leaving for Canada has been, let’s say, difficult for the diehard fans.
Michael Carrello, a season ticket holder from Trumbull, said it’s rough.
“It’s like losing a family member,” he said. “It’s like a stab-you-in-the-heart kind of feeling.”
Lori Uilecan, a Bridgeport local who’s had season tickets for all 25 years that the Islanders have been here, called it “devastating” and “heartbreaking.”
“We were hoping another team would come in,” Uilecan said. “It’s a gorgeous building. It was made for hockey and for other events, but that building is going to sit empty for a while, apparently.”
And the move will be kind of rough on the businesses around that soon-to-be empty building, too. On game days, the crowd at Brewport Brewing Company, a brewery and restaurant a block west of the arena, can be as much as half full of people wearing Islanders jerseys, Rangers jerseys, even old Hartford Whalers jerseys.
“We get a substantial crowd, considering the number of tickets that are sold,” Brewport managing partner Jeff Browning Sr. said.
“Any time teams like these leave, it kind of leaves a hole,” Browning said. “I mean, [the Islanders are] the only sports team in this area. We used to have baseball and hockey. Now we’re going to have neither.”
The Bridgeport Bluefish baseball team folded after the 2017 season.
And if you take a wider look at the sports environment in Connecticut, just 10 years ago, we had four professional baseball teams, three pro hockey teams, a pro tennis tournament every year in New Haven, and a WNBA franchise at Mohegan Sun.
By next year, in those four sports, Connecticut will be down to one pro baseball team and two pro hockey teams. And that’s it.
But one team that might stand to benefit from the Islanders leaving Bridgeport is Connecticut’s other AHL hockey team, the Hartford Wolf Pack.
According to their vice president of business operations, Erik Hansen, the Wolf Pack has always had an agreement with Bridgeport.
“‘Hey, we’re not going to market down in that neck of the woods.’ But now that we have a bigger market to go after,” he said, “we want those people to come up here to get their hockey fix.”
While Bridgeport’s club is an affiliate of the New York Islanders, the Wolf Pack are the New York Rangers’ AHL team. But Hansen says that all kinds of hockey fans are welcome in Hartford: Rangers fans, Islanders fans, whatever kind of fan.
“Now this is Connecticut’s team,” Hansen said. “So let’s focus on what we have here in Connecticut. Let’s support the Yard Goats, let’s support the Wolf Pack, let’s support the [Hartford Athletic]. Because it’s pretty nice to be able to have the second-best hockey in the world, and you can come out to see it for $25 a game. That’s pretty amazing.”
I asked Islanders season ticket holders Lori Uilecan and Michael Carrello if they plan to become Hartford Wolf Pack fans after the Islanders leave Bridgeport.
Uilecan’s answer was as simple as it gets: “Nope. Nope.”
Carrello, a life-long New York Islanders fan, said he could never root for the Rangers organization. But he does have a plan for hockey seasons going forward.
“I’ll have to spend time with my wife during the winter now,” he said.
Back at the game in Bridgeport a couple Fridays ago, I could feel this final season ticking away.
The Islanders tied it up late in the third period and went on to win, 3-2, in a shootout.
Barring some sort of big collapse, it looks like the Islanders will probably make the playoffs.
That would guarantee Bridgeport at least one more home game and another chance for fans to catch their Islanders in action before the team packs its bags and moves north of the border.
If you go
The Islanders play their final regular season home game on April 12 against the Hartford Wolf Pack.
Connecticut Public’s Matt Dwyer contributed to this report.
