What can the Islanders accomplish over the next 10 years?

It’s been 10 years since Scott Malkin with Jon Ledecky and Dewey Shay took over majority ownership of the Islanders from Charles Wang, and it’s been an eventful decade, highlighted by the opening of UBS Arena in 2021.

To mark the anniversary, Newsday conducted eight interviews over the course of a month with Islanders ownership, management and fans as well as an industry expert and New York Racing Association management to gauge the franchise’s priorities over the next 10 years.

What’s clear is that ownership does not want to focus on the past, only on achieving sustained on-ice success, growing the fan base and further developing the Belmont Park campus.

“I mean there’s only one priority: to win a Stanley Cup for the fans,” Ledecky told Newsday. “We will always provide the resources to allow management to put us in a position to win the Stanley Cup.”

That, of course, has been the elusive dream since the Islanders won the last of four straight Stanley Cups in 1983.

Since then, Islanders owners were unsuccessful for various reasons, but a root cause was the financial disadvantage of playing at aging Nassau Coliseum.

“In my research buckets, I spent a lot of time looking at the quality of ownership and what it was like in pro sports to have a transformational ownership group, and the Islanders sure as heck didn’t have that in the Wang era,” Robert Boland, a sports law professor at Seton Hall Law School who has consulted for groups seeking to purchase sports franchises, told Newsday.

“The hope was that Ledecky and his group would be. The first thing they did is they made the change moving out of Barclays Center and moving entirely into the new arena at Belmont. That’s a pretty massive undertaking . . . If you were to sort of think about the franchise, it obviously hasn’t returned on the ice to what it would be hoped to be. But maybe it’s the first 10 years of their process and that is about the timeline of a building. A transformational ownership group has to achieve some success in the sports product.”

Fans agree with that thinking.

“Maintaining a competitive team,” season-ticket holder David Stollow, 54, of Garden City, told Newsday when asked what is most important to him as an Islanders fan. “I think they’re headed in the right direction. I love the fact that they’re bringing up the youth. Matthew Schaefer, I believe, is really a generational player.”

'Ownership wants to win'

Malkin, Ledecky and Shaw were approved by the NHL to assume an 85% share in the Islanders on June 22, 2016, and the ownership group has since been joined by former NHL executive John Collins and financier Oliver Haarmann.

Wang first came to an agreement with the Malkin-led group in 2014 with the franchise valued at $485 million. In December, Forbes ranked the Islanders 15th among the 32 NHL teams with a $2.1 billion team value.

Though the ownership group has been actively running the Islanders for 10 years, it’s a relatively new management group. General manager Mathieu Darche was hired to replace Lou Lamoriello in May 2025. Five months later, Kelly Cheeseman was hired as the president of business operations. Pete DeBoer, making his sixth NHL stop, replaced Patrick Roy as coach in April.

All three, in separate interviews with Newsday, said ownership’s financial commitment made the job attractive.

“I came from Tampa, where I think Jeff Vinik was one of the outstanding owners in the league,” said Darche, the Lightning’s former assistant GM. “[Lightning GM] Julien BriseBois always told me when I interviewed for a few jobs, ‘Sometimes the GM will go as far as the owners. The resources they give you, the support they give you.’ And I felt that right away [with the Islanders].”

Darche added that the financial commitment goes beyond the ability to spend to the salary-cap ceiling, which is $104 million for the 2026-27 season, to include other financial perks such as the team staying at the best hotels on the road.

DeBoer called UBS Arena and the practice rink at Northwell Health Ice Center in East Meadow “the best facilities of any of the teams I’ve coached.” DeBoer, who went through three ownership groups in his first NHL job with the Panthers, called ownership stability one of the most important things for an NHL coach.

“It’s music to any coach’s ears to hear, ‘Hey, we’re willing to do whatever it takes to win games and give you a chance to be as competitive as possible,’ ” DeBoer said. “In today’s environment, that means spending to the cap. It’s a really hard league if you’re not one of those teams that’s in that vicinity.”

“We want to be a fun, attractive and an exciting team that is competitive and wins,” said Cheeseman, whose recent initiative to have fans design a third jersey led to a huge fan engagement. “Ownership wants to win, so giving Mathieu the resources to do that and the ability to be competitive and win ultimately will drive the entire ecosystem. We very much have a commitment from ownership to do that.”

DeBoer said one thing that has impressed him about Darche is how meticulous the GM is in projecting his season-by-season rosters over the next few years as younger talent is expected to be added. In addition to Schaefer, who will not turn 19 until Sept. 5, and center Cal Ritchie, 21, who had 13 goals and 17 assists as a rookie last season, defenseman Isaiah George, 22, is expected to compete for a full-time NHL role. So are right wing Victor Eklund, the 16th overall pick in 2025, and, perhaps, left wing Cole Eiserman, the 20th overall pick in 2024.

Defenseman Kashawn Aitcheson, the 17th overall pick in 2025, is starting his first season of professional hockey. Defenseman Malte Gustafsson, selected 13th overall in June, will join the organization next year after playing one more season in Sweden. So will center Danny Nelson, a second-round pick in 2023, after his senior season at Notre Dame.

Plus the organization will generate more revenue from its AHL affiliate, which was moved to Hamilton, Ontario, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, and will play in the 18,000-seat TD Coliseum. That building underwent a $300 million renovation and is operated by Oak View Group, which also developed and built UBS Arena.

Working with NYRA

The Islanders have missed the playoffs for two straight seasons and have not won a postseason series since advancing to their second straight NHL conference final in 2021. Not even Schaefer’s record-setting rookie season after he was selected first overall in 2025 could prevent a late-season swoon.

But UBS Arena will host the NHL All-Star Weekend in February and the reconstructed Belmont Park will open on Sept. 18 as Islanders ownership and the New York Racing Association work together to further develop a campus that includes shopping at Belmont Park Village.

“Somewhat tongue in cheek, if they could just fix the parking, I think everything would be fine,” Islanders fan Brett Cooper, 35, of East Rockaway, told Newsday. “Growing up, where we didn’t know if they were moving to Kansas City and having all the ownership issues and then the stadium issues, it’s actually quite nice to know they have a permanent home in Elmont.”

Parking difficulties, including the long walk or shuttle bus from the lot on the other side of the horse racing track, have been a consistent complaint, as reported by Newsday, since UBS Arena opened.

“We’ve been able to make the parking and travel flow better and better every year,” said Ledecky, adding that the team’s studies show 38% of the fans coming to Islanders games now are taking the Long Island Rail Road. “It’s incremental, but it will improve even more now that construction has ended on the campus. We’re looking forward to celebrating the launch of the entire campus, Belmont Park Village, Belmont Park Racetrack and UBS Arena.

“We have a phenomenal working relationship with the New York Racing Association and we’re going to be working with them to improve parking and transportation options as the Belmont Park campus continues to evolve.”

A big key moving forward will be continuing to establish synergy and a true partnership.

“From our point of view, we’ve got the park here, so if you’re going to come here early for a game, or maybe you don’t want to go around the mall, you might come out and hang out in the backyard and just check out the horses, maybe get something to eat," NYRA chief executive officer and president David O’Rourke told Newsday. "But in terms of activation, we’re working with specifically the arena folks on how do we do things outside of racing, how do we do events that complement racing and vice versa for their events. So the view here is that this is a campus, not three individual entities. Obviously, it is three individuals, but we’re operating the campus together.”

Growing the fan base

The five members of the team's ownership group have different personalities and backgrounds. The publicity-shy Malkin has been friends with Ledecky since they were roommates at Harvard. Haarmann, like Malkin, has strong business ventures in Europe.

Darche and Cheeseman said they both work closely with Malkin, though there are frequent ownership meetings to discuss things as a group. Cheeseman and Collins work closely on business operations.

And everybody talks to the gregarious Ledecky, who is quite comfortable as the co-owner who interacts consistently with the community and fans. Ledecky described it as a “collegial group all united in the goal.”

“It’s like you’re not an Islanders fan if you haven’t at least run into Jon Ledecky somewhere,” Cooper said. “It’s kind of fun to do. In the interactions, he seems like a really good guy who genuinely wants to not just have the on-ice product flourish but also the franchise as a whole. Which is sometimes the case and, in other teams, not always the case. Some teams just prefer the on-ice product and will say the fan experience will be what it is and people will come if it’s good. It’s nice to know that he cares about it holistically.”

The goal for the Islanders  — and Cheeseman specifically — is to make sure there are more fans to have these types of interactions.

Attendance for Islanders games increased year-over-year for the first time in the five-year history of the $1.1 billion UBS Arena. The team averaged 16,439 fans for their 41 home games with 26 sellouts at the 17,255-seat arena this past season, a 2.87% increase from the 2024-25 season’s average of 15,979, which was the lowest average since UBS Arena opened.

“We’ve got an incredible shot in the arm with some of the youth in our system, very much led by Matthew Schaefer,” Cheeseman said. “The upside is, I believe, limitless based on the opportunity of the demographic and the population of Long Island, Queens and Brooklyn and the associated surrounding areas. How we capture this next three to five years in a way that’s interesting and attractive to be an incredible challenger brand in New York is where we’re focused.

“I would say, in 10 years, if I look back, if we have grown new generations of Islanders fans that have become long-term fans across the entire region around us, to truly see our campus and our arena as a destination that they’re proud to represent, that would be my success rating. It’s all about fan growth to me.”

Which, of course, goes back to on-ice success.

“I think the question is going to be  can this organization translate all the things it’s done up to this point, which have been all-encompassing and a lot, can they translate it to success?” Boland said. “To at least a level of success on the ice that begins to kind of coalesce its fan base.”

Everybody has a role

Ledecky said one of the ownership group’s mantras is “owners own, GMs GM and coaches coach.” Which means Cheeseman is able to take the lead with his business vision just as Darche is in charge of the personnel decisions.

Darche said he will go to Malkin and brief him on what moves are coming up and why. For instance, when the free-agent market opened on July 1, Darche said he did not anticipate making any big signings and that Anders Lee, the captain since 2018, would be moving on. There was no pushback, only understanding.

“I told him I don’t expect to do much because even with the trades group last year, we didn’t add any contracts,” Darche said. “So it’s not only a cap thing, because I could have created more cap space if I wanted to. I could still create cap space today. But I told him what’s out there now, I don’t expect us to sign a big free agent because most of the free agents were over 30. It doesn’t really match our timeline. Maybe it gives us a little sugar high for this year.”

But what about the ownership group’s timeline? Malkin is 67, Ledecky and Shay are 68, Collins is 64 and Haarmann is the youngster at 58. Will they still own the Islanders in 10 years?

“On a personal basis, I sure hope so because I love the fact that I get to work with such amazing people,” Ledecky said. “It’s been an amazing journey so far.”