Portal:New York (state)/Selected article/18
The New York Islanders are a professional ice hockey team that plays in the NHL that is based in Uniondale, a hamlet located on Long Island in Town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, United States. The team is a member of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Islanders began play in 1972 and rapidly developed a dominant team that won four consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the early 1980s. They play their home games at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. With the impending start of the World Hockey Association (WHA) in the fall of 1972, the upstart league had plans to place its New York team in the brand-new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Nassau County. However, Nassau County officials did not consider the WHA a major league and wanted nothing to do with the upstart New York Raiders. The only legal way to keep the Raiders out of the Coliseum was to get an NHL team to play there, so William Shea, who had helped bring the New York Mets to the area a decade earlier, was pressed into service once again.