Islander's Fans Cheer during Moment of Silence for VT

Islanders Maintenance Still Cleaning Trash off Ice

Buffalo Sabres v. NY Islanders
Game 3 - Fans

It must be really tough for the NY Islanders to get any advantage from playing home in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Long Island. While I was watching the game, it was hard to tell who had more fans, Buffalo or NY. It is amazing how big of a fan base the Sabres have. It probably has to do with the city's poor economic condition which forced many Buffalo fans out. Now that the Sabres are one of the favorites heading into the Stanley Cup Playoffs, fans are just coming out of the woodwork.

On another note, a few of the Islanders fans should have been thrown out of the game last night before the game even started.

I'm referring to the incident that happened during the before the singing of the national anthem. The announcer wanted to have a moment of silence for the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech early that morning. I thought it was a very touching thing to do because it was the worst mass shooting in the history of the US.

Then the unthinkable happened.

A few Islanders fans began chanting "Lets go Islanders". Then many of the other fans started booing them because they were being disrespectful. When that quieted down another fan yelled "Rangers Suck ____(male sex organ)" The rest of the arena laughed and it was done. So much for the 30+ families who lost loved ones. It was horrible. I hope the ushers did something but I doubt it due to the fact that they did nothing later on in the game. - Report from Fan inside Arena

Later in the third period, fans became upset over a few officiating calls and began throwing garbage and tons of other stuff onto the ice.

If I recall correctly, the same thing happened to Buffalo except the fans in Buffalo have enough class to not act like caged chimpanzees. The game had to have been stopped in order to clear wheelbarrows full of trash off the ice. They would have taken the trash out of the stands but they didn't have enough room to put 16,234 Islanders fans. Technically, the Islanders should have gotten a 2 minute minor penalty, but it was so close to the end of the game the Refs probably didn't want to deal with it.

Even Rick Jeanerette commented on how poor the Islanders fans acted and how nothing was being done by the ushers.

It took six Ice Girls and two equipment officials about five minutes to clean the mess. Good thing beer bottles are now plastic, because for all the bottles that made it onto the ice, there were so many others that hit unexpecting fans in the first few rows.

No one deserved that, not the refs and not the fans.

"You hope nobody gets hit with something that will hurt them," Stickle said, "because at the end of the day it's a game."
-NewsDay

We will see if New York fans can clean up their ice and clean the trash out of their stands tomorrow night.

Another Reason why Buffalo has the #1 fans in the League.