The New York Islanders are staying in Long Island; deal with it

All those fun rumors about the New York Islanders settling down in the Sprint Center have been quashed once and for all by team owner Charles Wang. Well, for the next four-plus years anyway. Wang has spent the past three years trying to convince Hempstead, New York, to build a massive development with a hockey arena for his team, but he hasn’t accomplished much more than pissing off the local government.

Now Wang is trying another tactic: being reasonable. He announced

yesterday that he’s friggin’ overjoyed to keep his team in the 38-year-old

Nassau Veterans Coliseum in Long Island until the lease runs out in

2015. Then, he’ll look up Kansas City in his little black

book of desperate cities with empty arenas, and we’ll fall breathlessly in love with the idea of the Islanders again … and then he’ll get the stadium he wants.