John Pickett and Bill Torrey said in 1991 the New York Islanders cannot be left behind and need a new arena now.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/18/s...ts-to-fill-islanders-want-a-bigger-house.html
I read something recently where Bill Torrey and John Pickett went to Bill Shea for his advice on what to do with the Islanders in 1978 when Boe was dead broke and team was 40 million in debt, he advised them declare bankruptcy and walk away. Pickett said no and he agreed with Torrey the fan support and great young players was something special here, then told Msg/Rags go to hell, you can't have Potvin and paid them their territorial fees.
Wang was a fantastic owner top to bottom and should be in builders Hall of Fame for owners for putting up with what he did here because he came in with no fan support.
All players love him past and present, spent 130 million dollars his second year and renovated a building he did not own for Smg while Ed Snider's Flyers got all the revenue from the team, even eleven percent of gate. Every other team in NY/NJ made a call and said where's our new taxpayer building?
Meanwhile he paid out of pocket as a tenant for new lockerooms, scoreboards, flooded weight rooms while the landlord let the building fall apart.
He outspent teams in modern taxpayer facilities getting handouts long before any cap floor, saved Bridgeport from Boe family again and runs arena to this day and renovated there too, created Neulion for NHL. Honored alumni to the point he was accused of doing it to sell tickets and now he owns Northwell.
Torrey, Trottier, Lafontaine, Bourne, core of four, 1980 team, and teams hall of fame was started by him. A lot of alumni work for franchise to this day.
And his unheralded efforts with LH tournaments continue, for a guy many said bought the team for real estate he sure seems to do a ton for no property for hockey charities.
Funny how Bridgeport, Republicans and Democrats in Nassau all made deals with him and NHL, AHL, ECHL.
He was the last owner to get a revenue sharing check and was spending 40 million before any cap floor.
Nassau kept his LH project money until a few months ago, made him throw a million into Cantiague and 600k disappeared from 5.1 million from last summer.
Milstein put up with a month of Nassau before knowing it would never work and dropped payroll to nothing. Wang from Hamrlik to Boychuk's front-loaded contract kept spending with same lease Mario sold off his roster with wholesale.
Everyone Wang could sign he did, he could not front-load contracts until last summer.
Our fans were as bad as Nassau. D'Amato, Mondello, Murray, Gulotta and Suozzi and Jacobs. Year 3 Wang raised ticket prices 38 percent to pay for players he signed, fans said no thanks after 2002 playoffs.
Every time he spent he tried raising ticket prices to league avg, fans again said no thanks. Even in 2012 after comical referendum Newsday defeated so they could bid on Coliseum to kick NYI out no NY team would have allowed he sent Picker to legislature saying he wanted to work something out to keep team here. Finally he had enough, defaulted on Marriott, and did his deal with Barclay's.
And to his finals days as owner he kept spending to resign players, we had days before him J.P Dumont had to be traded, now every prospect get's signed early. Lee, Bailey, Nelson, Nielsen, Hamonic, Leddy and many others were not low ball contacts.
His teams had horrible luck with injuries and was never shy about paying coaches not to work.
7 playoffs in 15 years. A lot of teams have been far worse who all got taxpayer funded new arena's and fans willing to pay top dollar 41 games a year to support a max payroll.
Look at the deal a crook like Mike Illitch got, who refused to pay his cable fees back to 1980's or his rent. What Edmonton's Daryl Katz just got or what Garden receives from taxpayers since 1982.
How much of Wang's money financed Devils, Arizona or other teams since he became an owner?
Now you have same people who boycotted them away using same failed plan to boycott them back? LOL
