It's Starting

This is supposed to be a post about the Islanders bringing back Wade Dubielewicz. Or maybe it's supposed to be a series of thinly-veiled shots at the Islanders' training staff, the only people I can think to blame for the roughly 20,000 man games the Islanders have lost to injury over the past two seasons. Or maybe it's supposed to be about two consecutive 2-1 losses, two games in which the Islanders have played extremely well, but fell short to their biggest rivals and the league's best team. Any of these would work.

Instead, I'm stuck here fearing the worst.
By now, everyone's heard that the Islanders will be playing a pre-season game in Kansas City in September. Hell, even Howie Rose and Billy Jaffe speculated about the hidden meaning of the game on the air tonight. Of course, they spun it in as positive a manner as possible, but the fact remains that there's a lot of negative that can be gleaned from this story. And we, as hockey fans - forget about the rivalry for a second - need to pay attention to this sort of stuff.
If you've read this blog for a while, you may be aware that we were among the first to raise the possibility of the Islanders being moved. That's not bragging, just a little reading between the lines that is starting to come to fruition. This Lighthouse Project just isn't happening right now, and it's so key to the Islanders' future that Charles Wang is taking proactive measures to get it going. If that means playing an exhibition game in Kansas City, fine. That said, I think we all have reason to panic.
Football fans will remember the infamous "Proposed West Side Stadium" the Jets were championing a few years back. It was the cornerstone of New York City's 2012 Olympic bid. It was a pretty good plan - it would bring the Olympics to the City, it would give the Jets their own home (not to mention actually bringing a New York football team to New York), and would make it a whole lot easier for fans to attend games. So what happened? The stadium became a political issue and the whole thing died shortly thereafter.
The lesson to be learned from this? Nothing we don't already know; namely, once politicians get involved, you can forget about progress being made - ever.
Now, we here at The Rivalry prefer to keep our hockey and our politics separate. So we'll spare you the whole debate over whose fault it is that the Lighthouse Project isn't moving, how much good it will really do, so on and so forth. All we really care about is, will the Islanders be moving? I mean, I'd love a renovated Coliseum, but I'd sit in the crummiest seat in the house if it meant keeping the Islanders on Long Island.
After the announcement of the Islanders-Kings game in Kansas City, I did a lot of thinking. And the obvious facts, namely that the Kings' owner also owns the Sprint Center, were not included in those thoughts. I thought about the possibility that this team might not be here in just a handful of years. I thought about my dreams of taking my daughter to the Coliseum and explaining all the different banners, and the powerful memories behind them, to her. I thought about the virtual guarantee of this team suddenly becoming a powerhouse immediately after leaving Long Island, and I thought about how I might feel about it. I thought about the guy at the Prudential Center who asked me which team I'd root for if the Islanders ever moved and how I couldn't give him an answer. I thought and I thought, because that's all I could do.
This is going to be a time when thorough introspection outweighs fact, when preparing for the worst beats hoping for the best. I know I'll have a lot more moments like these as the Lighthouse Project gets debated for the next eternity or so. Will we end up like the Pittsburgh Penguins, who were all but packed for Kansas City, but ended up staying in Pittsburgh and making the Stanley Cup Final just two years later? Or will we end up like the Quebec Nordiques, a team that finally achieves its great promise upon leaving? Only time will tell, and for much of this time, we will be out of the loop. All we can do is hope and pray for a happy ending.