12:30am Ct Post with most of what's below from Howard Saffan.
I understand why Charles Wang likely wanted no part of sharing a stage with some of the people who forced this day to happen. Short of Dolan winning the bid it was a horrible day.
A celebration in Nassau County for losing it's only major professional sports team, one with a championship history/tradition that was special beyond words to officially become minor league while every other municipality found hundreds of millions in taxpayer money (even bankrupt Detroit) to keep the public trust with it's sports teams?
More like a celebration of political incompetence for over two decades.
Some of the same people over the years with the same hollow words, legislature approval pending.
Folks, I cannot create my own quoted news. (though some bloggers who need page views try) I can only link to the articles with the direct quotes from the individuals involved.
Ct Post: Friday afternoon Bridgeport Sound Tigers President, Howard Saffan flat out said Bruce Ratner's comments on bringing Sound Tigers to Nassau Coliseum were irresponsible.
“My comment is the same position (as yesterday),” Saffan said; see yesterday’s. “We have a contractual arrangement with the City of Bridgeport to put a hockey team in here. We absolutely to not have any agreement in place (to Nassau). Our owner has not executed any agreement with Barclays.”
So if at some point Charles Wang does make a deal and something did go down?
“We will explore all our avenues to put an AHL team in this building,” Saffan said. “It’s irresponsible, what (Ratner) said.”
For myself it's not the first time Ratner's gone overboard with claims though he did elaborate on the 18,000 for hockey fairly enough.
Bruce Ratner on April, 21st, 2012 told the NY Post, Rich Calder the Barclay's Center could hold 18,000 for hockey:
Q: How many people will the arena hold?
A: 18,200 for basketball, 19,000 for concerts and likely 14,500 for hockey.
Q: Regarding hockey, is there any chance that more seating down the road could be added for hockey? [14,500 seats would make it the smallest NHL hockey venue]
A: Here’s the issue: Hockey is the kind of sport that because of the dasher [boards] you can get a slightly obstructed seat when the puck is right on your side. We can hold 18,000 for hockey. The question is how many above 14,500 would have somewhat obstructed seats. We have a good sense of it [that the number of seats not obstructed is about 14,500], so if your question is whether we’d want to put in more seats? Probably not. Can we change the obstructions? Probably not. Will more seats be okay? Possibly.