New York Islanders will move to Barclays Center

• Team name and logo will remain the same
• Islanders have come up short in effort to build arena in Nassau County
• Sports management professor says Islanders might develop new fan base

The New York Islanders will move from Long Island to the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, starting in the 2015-16 NHL season, the team and arena announced Wednesday

News of the relocation broke Wednesday morning and was confirmed at an afternoon news conference, featuring Islanders owner Charles B. Wang, Barclays Center majority owner and developer Bruce Ratner, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Commissioner Gary Bettman, Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, Islanders general manager Garth Snow, and Barclays Center and Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormark.

The Islanders' lease with Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., runs through the 2014-15 season, and in August, Ratner said he was "trying like hell" to persuade the Islanders to relocate.

The name and logo will remain the same when the team moves to Brooklyn, according to a news release on the Barclays Center web site. It is a 25-year agreement between the Islanders and Barclays Center, subject to NHL approval, and the team and arena already are accepting deposits on season tickets.

The Nets moved into the $1 billion Barclays Center for the 2012-13 NBA season and have played three preseason games at the impressive arena at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. It is located at a major public transportation hub with 11 subway stops and the Long Island Rail Road dropping riders off just steps away from the main Barclays Center entrance.

The Islanders have tried unsuccessfully to build an arena in Nassau County to replace the aging Coliseum, which opened in 1972. After voters rejected one plan, Wang said he wouldn't stay there once the lease expires.

The Islanders won four consecutive titles at the Coliseum from 1980-83, but haven't made the playoffs since 2007.

"Nassau Coliseum was awful when I played in it (in the early 1990s)," former NHL player Ray Ferraro tweeted. "Cannot stay in that building."

The Islanders had been scheduled to play a preseason game at the Nets' arena, but it was canceled by the lockout.

The Nets play their home opener against the Knicks Nov. 1 in a nationally televised game on TNT.

The Barclays Center was built for the NBA and for concerts, and the projected seating capacity for hockey has been about 14,500.

Before Wednesday's announcement, the NHL's smallest arena was the MTS Center in Winnipeg that seats 15,004.

The Islanders ranked 29th in attendance last season, averaging a little more than 13,000 per season in their 40-year arena.

"From the team perspective, the hope is that they will attract fans in a way that they haven't in years," said Lee Igel, professor of Sports Management at NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management. "This is a team that historically had been one of the most popular in the NHL, with a string of Stanley Cups, but that was decades ago."

Igel said it's difficult to project how the move from Long Island to Brooklyn will ultimately affect the team's fan base. The Brooklyn arena offers many options to get there via train, subway or bus. But it will be a major commute for those trying to get from Long Island to Brooklyn.

"The question is now how many fans will stick with the Islanders and how many will feel like the Islanders gave up on them," Igel said. "The great question is, 'Who is going to show up?"

Igel's best guess is the Islanders will develop a new fan base. "There may be some, or many holdovers," Igel said. "But what is really happening here is the team is moving a few miles away, but is really like picking up and moving to a different area, and the plan to get people in the seats has to be exactly that."

Former New York Rangers player Tom Laidlaw said even though he knew Nassau Coliseum had outlived its usefulness it still "seems shocking" that the Islanders won't play there beyond 2014-15.

"That seems like a historic place to me because when I started playing for the Rangers in 1980-81 the Islanders had just won their first Stanley Cup," Laidlaw said. "The Rangers-Islanders rivalry. Even preseason games seemed like playoff games. A lot of those games were played in that building.

"But for fans, it hasn't been a great building for a long time. You look at the renovated Madison Square Garden, or The Rock in Newark or the Barclays Center and those are all buildings designed to give fans a great experience even if it is not a great game."

It will be imperative, though, to put a good team on the ice,

"The idea of building a new facility and thinking people will just show up -- that no longer holds up," Igel said. "If we want this to be a boon to Brooklyn, it's not enough just to collect a sports franchise and just expect the economics to take care of themselves."