Nassau Coliseum developers have "shelved plans to have a minor league hockey team play its home games at the renovated arena when it reopens in April, despite agreeing to do so in their contract with Nassau County," according to Brodsky & Baumbach of NEWSDAY. Nassau County Exec Edward Mangano's '13 lease with Forest City Ratner Chair & CEO Bruce Ratner stipulates that an AHL team would play “substantially all of their regular and postseason home games at the Coliseum for a period of at least 15 years.” But Nassau officials said that they will not "enforce the AHL contract clause because it would lock the county into a long-term deal with a minor league franchise, and could complicate a new effort" to bring the Islanders "back to the Coliseum." Mangano said the county “has reserved its option” with enforcing the AHL contract clause “while the Islanders are considering their options.” The Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the Islanders' AHL affiliate, "would have been the Coliseum’s anchor tenant." But Islanders co-Majority Owner Jon Ledecky, who owns a controlling interest in the Sound Tigers with Islanders co-Owner Scott Malkin, said in July, “We are happy in Bridgeport” (NEWSDAY, 2/7).
