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Brooklyn arena builder is “trying like hell” to get the Islanders to move there

Shawn Jay-Z Carter, Bruce Ratner

Nets part-owner Jay-Z, right, shakes hands with Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner, with the still under-construction Barclay’s Center behind them, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, Sept. 26, 2011. Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z said at a news conference that he will perform “one, two, maybe three” times at the Barclays Center. Dates haven’t been set. Jay-Z also made it official that the club will be called the Brooklyn Nets. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

AP

The builder of Barclays Center in Brooklyn really wants to have the New York Islanders call his arena home.

Bruce Ratner tells Denis Hamill of the New York Daily News that while having the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets make his new urban palace their home turf is great, adding a once proud NHL franchise to his list of tenants would be perfect.

“And I am trying like hell to get the Islanders to make Barclays Center their new hockey home,” says Ratner, sweeping his hand across the big arena where workers in cherry-picker buckets installed acoustic panels on the domed ceiling as others installed black seats. “They will play a pre-season game here against the Devils.”

If that preseason game doesn’t wind up canceled by a lockout, it’ll make for an intriguing audition for the NHL there. The one issue that sticks out is how it only holds roughly 14,500 for hockey and the quality of the sight lines has come into question. If it all plays out well with minimal issues, Isles owner Charles Wang will have a heck of an option to play in his hopes to keep the Islanders in New York.