My 3 favorite Brendan Burke moments as NY Islanders play-by-play announcer

The Islanders open up UBS Arena

For over thirty years, the Islanders' hopes of building a new arena were surrounded by drama. You can go back to the mid-90s and read about 'plans' for a new arena at the same time the team was wearing the Fisherman logo. The John Spano debacle followed, and Charles Wang's dreams for the ambitious Lighthouse Project never received the backing from Nassau County politicians to make it a reality. Then, highly taxed residents voted down a last-ditch referendum for a new arena at the same location in August. 1, 2011, sparking relocation concerns. A detour to Brooklyn kept the Islanders in the metropolitan arena and technically on Long Island, but it did nothing to dispel the stigma of a franchise without a home that was unable to compete with the rest of the NHL.

That all changed on Nov. 20, 2021. The Islanders not only had a home of their own, but it was a fourth-generation, state-of-the-art arena that is the envy of many around the NHL. The Islanders organization went from laughing-stock to an organization capable of hosting the NHL All-Star Game with an arena that is a draw rather than a deterrent.

This is how Burke set the scene before the puck dropped in Elmont:

"1255 Hempstead Turnpike in Uniondale is now 2400 Hempstead Turnpike in Elmont. UBS Arena at Belmont Park ...Welcome home, Islanders fans and you can write 'home' in ink this time."

"The headline here isn't 'NHL team opens new arena' it is much more than that to so many people. For so many years this is a moment that they never believed would happen and year after year that idea was only reinforced. It's a 30-year saga that is hard to explain, harder to believe and impossible to truly understand except by Islanders fans that lived through it."

"Tonight is a celebration. A celebration of a new era of Islanders hockey. A new feeling of stability. A shift in perception and perspective. A new beginning."

"But in this case, the end is just as important as the beginning. The closure is as important as the opening. It's the end of the uncertainty, the instability. It's the end of the relocation threats and the jokes. The end of the worry. That thought in the back of your mind that just wouldn't go away."

"From the Lighthouse Project to the Barclays Center, there is an entire generation of Islanders fans that don't know when the Islanders' home wasn't in question. Exhale. It's over, it's all over."

"This is the home the franchise deserves. A world-class, state-of-the-art hockey palace with a Nassau County Zip Code."