New York Islanders John Tavares shoots against the Pittsburgh Penguins on SAturday, May 11, 2013 (Photo by Joe Nuzzo)

The Islanders’ Stanley Cup dreams may have been iced by the Pittsburgh Penguins this weekend, but the playoff run also cast a spotlight on their resurgence and impending move from Nassau Coliseum.

Several national print and online news and sports outlets published articles dissecting fans’ renewed faith in the long-struggling hockey team that comes just as it prepares to move from its first home to the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn—stories that at times felt like obituaries for the 41-year-old Uniondale arena dubbed “the old barn.”

“Anybody that watched the games and saw the crowd and the atmosphere obviously in the building…we got some respect around the league,” coach Jack Capuano told reporters after the Islanders abrupt 4-3 Game 6 overtime loss Saturday ended their season. “I think they respect the fact that our guys left it on the ice, they gave it everything that they had and it was great for our guys to hear the response that [fans] had to offer.”

Fans had chanted “MVP” for center John Tavares and “Let’s Go Islanders” despite the disappointing ending. The same chant in the form of car horn honks were heard for miles around the coliseum last week after the Isles won their first playoff game at home in 11 years.

A day prior to that win, Grantland, a sports and entertainment news site, ran a loving portrait of the coliseum, characterizing it as not really all that bad since “the ‘worst’ stadiums in America are often the best, and the ‘best’ are defined as the ones where you can buy sushi.”

Last Friday, the sports news website Deadspin posted a semi-autobiographical, somewhat political historical analysis, declaring “The Coliseum, from the very beginning, belonged to the people. And that was before the people’s hockey team took off.”

The New York Times wrangled a few fans, too, one of whom found out first hand how “this place used to vibrate, back when the Islanders were good.”

The Associated Press noted the Isles’ other rivals, whom fans are now left rooting against in a Game 7 showdown Monday night, usually overshadow the underdogs.

“They still take a backseat in attention to the New York Rangers, but there was that time in the 1980s when the Islanders ruled the league with four straight championships and a fifth consecutive appearance in the finals,” AP reported.

Islanders playoff fever was spreading like wildfire oddly just as four bidders publicly vie to renovate or rebuild the coliseum, including a plan by the Barclay’s Center owners who said if they win the bid, the Isles can still play six games a year at the Uniondale arena.

If the team decides to move to Brooklyn before their coliseum lease is up in 2015 as has been widely reported and what the roster will look like in October remains to be seen. But one thing is sure, reports ESPN’s Katie Strang: “Perception of the Islanders is bound to change after this.”

Kyle Okposo scored the first of two third-period goals at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale on Sunday, May 5, 2013 (Photo by Joe Nuzzo/Long Island Press).

The New York Islanders’ played a rare sold-out playoff game Sunday at Nassau Coliseum—their first since 2007—filling the arena with fans feverishly rooting for their team’s first Stanley Cup since 1983.

Before the Pittsburgh Penguins took a 2-1 series lead with a 5-4 win, a sea of blue and orange flooded the Uniondale parking lot—tailgating parties fueled partly by Cinco de Mayo and die-hards soaking up their team’s last local home games until the Isle’s impending move to the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn in 2015, maybe sooner.

“MVP!” fans chanted for John Tavares, the Isles’ center and alternate captain who led the rebound from a 2-goal deficit to tie it up at 4-4 with his first career post-season goal before the game went into overtime.

Click here to view a photo gallery of NY Islanders’ fans tailgating at the coliseum on Sunday

“It takes four to win,” Islanders Coach Jack Capuano told reporters at a news conference Monday. “We’re confident we will come out and play a strong game tomorrow.”

The Islanders’ last post-season series win was 20 years ago—also against their longtime rivals, the Penguins, in game seven. Isles’ faithful can be forgiven if they weren’t too sympathetic to Knicks’ fans that saw their team win its first post-season series win in 13 years on Friday.

Adding to the spectacle Sunday was the fact that the NHL lockout forced a hockey season so short that May is typically when third-round playoff games are scheduled. And just days prior, four groups of developers—one of which included Jay-Z—pitched Nassau leaders their plans to refurbish and/or rebuild the 40-year-old arena.

Playoff fever breaks out at the coliseum again when the puck drops 7 p.m. Tuesday.

A satellite view of Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale.

Hip hop mogul Jay-Z was among four teams of companies that pitched their visions Thursday for the aging Nassau Coliseum property to a committee that will later pick the winning proposal.

The four ideas were split in two camps: Three groups that suggested refurbishing the 40-year-old arena versus one that wants to demolish it and build anew. All the plans reduce the number of seats from the current 16,800, which Nassau County suggested in its latest request for proposals for the infamously difficult-to-redevelop prime real estate.

“Long a victim of the Long Island ‘no,’ we are encouraged that one of the proposals today holds the key,” County Executive Ed Mangano said during the presentation hosted by his Business Advisory Council, which will decide the winner this summer.

Proposing a new arena is the Blumenfeld Development Group, which made its fourth pitch for the land since the 1970s. Refurbished coliseum plans were unveiled by New York Sports & Entertainment LLC, the Madison Square Garden

Jay-Z, right, shares a laugh with Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano on Thursday, May 2, 2013.

Company and Jay-Z’s group, led by the Forest City Ratner Companies, which built the new Barclay’s Center and lured the Islanders from the coliseum.

“We need to create a new identity for Nassau—one that’s bold and new and fresh,” said Brett Yormark, CEO of the Barclay’s Center and the Brooklyn Nets. The surrounding property would feature a movie theater, restaurants, an exhibition hall and an outdoor amphitheater.

“Programming is really the fuel for this engine,” he said, pointing to plans to host upward of 300 events annually, including six Islanders games, 38 minor-league hockey games and 54 family events among the line up.

MSG, which was spun off from Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. in 2010, likewise rolled out plans that included creating an “entertainment district” surrounding a refurbished arena.

“We don’t have time to pick a plan that doesn’t work,” said RXR Reality CEO Scott Rechler, who joined the MSG pitch team. He was alluding to his prior plans to redevelop the coliseum in the ambitious Lighthouse project with Islanders’ owner Charles Wang.

Wang has also reportedly been considering moving the Islanders to Brooklyn before their lease is up on their original Uniondale home in 2015—adding even more urgency to the proposal process.

Jim Johnson, who made the presentation for Bernard Shereck, CEO of New York & Sports Entertainment LLC, emphasized their Long Island roots and joked that “the Bernie’s our biggest celebrity” compared to the competition.

“Nobody can ever dispute that Long Island is a hotbed for lacrosse,” Johnson said while touting plans to bring a lacrosse team to the arena and create more space within the existing facility for an exhibition hall.

Starting off their presentation with a video of a Nassau Coliseum lookalike being demolished was Ed Blumenfeld, whose firm joined with SMG, the current Nassau Coliseum management company.

“We think we have something that will be difference and iconic to Long Island,” he said, adding that the company would buy a minor-league hockey team if it won the bid.

Jerry Goldman, the current general manager of the coliseum, expressed his support. “Long Island deserves a brand new arena, not a refurbished arena,” he said.

Fox’s hit talent show is hosting open auditions at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale on Thursday. X-Factor is looking for solo singers and vocal groups, ages 12 and over, for the chance to win a record deal with Sony Music.

For aspiring contestants planning to audition, the registration period is April 23-24, either in person at the arena or online. Wristbands will be handed out from 8 a.m. Tuesday until 11 a.m. Thursday. People will not be allowed to camp out.

There is no cost to audition but there is a parking fee of $20 at the coliseum. After obtaining a wristband, X-Factor hopefuls will be asked to return to the coliseum by 7 a.m. Thursday for the audition.

Other audition cities are New Orleans on April 14 and Denver on May 14. People may also audition online by submitting a two minute a cappella video from now until June 16. For more information on the rules, registration, or online auditioning visit www.thexfactorusa.com.

Nassau County police arrested Craig Stanley, 54, who allegedly walked up to a group of people outside the arena following a New York Islanders game Sunday to “touch the victim in an inappropriate manner.”

Stanley was charged with forcible touching. He is due at First District Court in Hempstead on March 19.

Making a fashion statement all his own, Elvis Presley basks in the adoration of his fans at his Nassau Coliseum concert on July 19, 1975. his next show there was set for 1977 (see unused ticket at right).
(Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)

The lights dimmed and suddenly the packed Nassau Coliseum resounded with the opening chords of the 2001: Space Odyssey theme. Elvis Presley was in the house.

The fans roared as the King of Rock and Roll took center stage. Their camera bulbs sparkled like diamonds in the arena darkness and radiated off Elvis’ rhinestone jumpsuit.

“I remember all the lights flashing as he was coming out,” says Ellen Granelli, who was one of the lucky ones. “He had the audience in the palm of his hand for the entire time.”

Granelli, who works at the Northport library, saw Elvis at Madison Square Garden in June 1972—the only time he ever played in Manhattan besides the Ed Sullivan Theater—and both times he came to Uniondale in June 1973 and July 1975. The three shows basically followed the same set list, but she didn’t mind “because it was Elvis! You wanted to be there!”

Granelli was in her 20s then—today her three kids are in their 30s. She had tickets to see Elvis in August 1977 with her new husband as well as her girlfriend Mary Jo, who’d been her companion at the previous concerts. They never got the chance. She and her husband were driving through the mountains of Maine on vacation when Elvis was all they heard on their car radio. Strange, they thought, since he hadn’t had a top 10 hit in quite a while.

“This isn’t good!” Granelli remembers thinking. Sadly, she was right.

“I was talking to my children the other night…and I said I saw the older Elvis, and then I stopped myself!” she says. “Older Elvis! He died at 42—that’s not old!”

On Aug. 16, 1977, less than a week before Elvis was to appear at the Coliseum—his first venue on the next leg of his tour that year—his girlfriend at the time, Ginger Alden, found him lying face-down on the shag carpet of his bathroom at Graceland, his famous mansion on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis.

Somewhere in Granelli’s Northport home are her unused tickets. Her kids tell her they’ve seen them there and she’s sure she hasn’t thrown them away. Her Elvis collection, which includes “every album” (some 33 recordings by her reckoning), is up in the attic, but she doesn’t play his songs much these days, in part because they’re on vinyl. Unlike a later TV generation who endured Elvis’ egregious movies broadcast in the Sixties, Granelli got her first look at “Elvis the Pelvis” (as the puritanical press pilloried him at the time) when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.

“I was a little girl—I was only nine,” she says with a laugh. “That’s where it all started. From the earlier years I thought he was just magnificent, charismatic and very talented.” But she had to wait to see Elvis perform live, and she grabbed every chance she could get, even though it was obvious that the Elvis of the Seventies wasn’t the same performer who’d set the rock and roll world ablaze in the 1950s.

“He had a magnificent presence, even at that stage, that just kind of drew you in and took you to another place,” she says. “It was still Elvis, and it was still his voice.”

She and her girlfriend never made it to the front of the stage where Elvis would ceremonially shed scarf after scarf to the adoring female fans reaching out to him, but it didn’t matter to Granelli. “If you’re a true fan, you understand that you can be in the zone in the last seat in the last row,” she says.

On that fateful August morning in 1977 Steve Prisco—today Sam Ash Music’s marketing director—was driving to a ticket-scalper on Long Island to get front-row seats for the Nassau Coliseum show when he heard the news: The King was dead.

A young guitarist growing up in Huntington Station, Prisco had acquired a taste for rockabilly music after looking through his older brothers’ record collections and getting turned on to the tracks Elvis had recorded at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis.

“The power of that music really grabbed me,” he says. “Up to that point, Elvis was just the guy in those afternoon movies.”

Prisco’s first guitar teacher was from Tennessee and had moved in right across the street. “He was a real good ole boy,” Prisco recalls. The teacher asked him who his favorite guitarist was. Prisco had read that the Young Rascals’ guitarist Gene Cornish had revered Scotty Moore, so Prisco repeated the name. “He looks at me, like, ‘Really?!’” Prisco recalls. “I had no idea who Scotty Moore was.” A few years later, he learned that Moore was the great sideman in Elvis’ Sun sessions, and so those seminal riffs he’d been learning in Huntington ran very deep indeed.

ALL SHOOK UP: Steve Prisco (top) strikes a chord at the recent Elvis Show in Bay Shore while Chris James, in shades, hits the high note, Jenna Silverman croons with that special feeling, and Paul Schmitz (bottom) does it in style. (Photos by Ken Farrell)

These days, through the New York Roots Music Association—NYRMA for short—Prisco has been the front man for “The Elvis Show,” Long Island’s longest-running Elvis tribute and charity event, which has raised more than $50,000 for food pantries over two decades. For the last three years in a row, they’ve sold out the YMCA Boulton Center for the Performing Arts in Bay Shore.

Prisco got the idea for the first show when he realized that his rockabilly trio was going to be playing on Elvis’ Jan. 8th birthday.

“We had a lot of friends who’d come down to see us—friends from other bands—and I always enjoyed having people come up on stage,” he says. “So that night I spread the word around that ‘Hey, we’re going to do a bunch of Elvis stuff, so come on down and come up and sing a song.’”

It clicked, and the next year he decided to ask people to bring canned food to donate to local pantries for the hungry and homeless. And so the event grew from a little bar in Huntington to where it is today—with a hiatus in the ’90s—and it’s been going strong eight years in a row with dozens of performers. But it was always about Elvis and his songs. The cardinal rule, Prisco said, was: “No Elvis impersonators!” He understands that some fans fixate on the “whole mythology and campiness and that whole insane side” of the Elvis image, and that “the impersonators play into that,” but, for Prisco and his peers, it’s about being “true to the vibe.”

No matter how his career was going on stage, Elvis always had his standards, according to his wife, Priscilla Presley, who divorced him in October 1973. As she wrote in her memoir, he “couldn’t abide singers who were, in his words, ‘all technique and no emotional feeling,’ and in this category he firmly placed Mel Torme and Robert Goulet. They were both responsible for two television sets being blown away with a .357 Magnum.”

The recent NYRMA event in January delved into Elvis’ “deep catalogue and some odd-ball stuff,” Prisco says, but the music could stand on its own. “I think if you didn’t know it was an Elvis show, you would still have enjoyed it because of the level of the performances and the musicianship.”

They did the King proud—and, in that spirit, it’s worth recalling how much the New York Times’ then-top music critic, John Rockwell, appreciated seeing and hearing Elvis himself when he last performed on Long Island almost 40 years ago.

“Mr. Presley can still rock, and he felt like rocking a refreshing lot of the time Saturday at the Nassau Coliseum,” the critic wrote on July 21, 1975. “When this observer last saw Mr. Presley, it was also the Nassau Coliseum, two summers ago. Then he was fat, lazy and ineffectual. On Saturday he was still fat—fatter than ever, a blown-up cartoon of his spare 1950s toughness. But he wasn’t lazy, and he most certainly wasn’t ineffectual.”

Granelli, who was also there that day, would no doubt agree with Rockwell’s assessment.

“It appeared to me he had the same charisma that he had in the ‘50s and the early ‘60s but he was almost a caricature of himself in the performance,” she says. She blamed his management, Colonel Tom Parker in particular. “I don’t think [Elvis] was any longer true to who he really was,” she says. “He was what they were telling him he had to be.”

Like many an Elvis afficionado, she believes he had tremendous talent but no coping skills to fend off the freeloaders.

“He was the son of a sharecropper,” she says. “Where would he have learned any business acumen? So once Colonel Parker got into the picture, I think that started out to be a good thing but ultimately destroyed him.”

Prisco says that though Parker took 50 percent of Elvis’ share, the performer never lacked anything he wanted—and he shouldn’t be held blameless for decisions that in retrospect limited his career, let alone his life. As for what Elvis achieved, Prisco believes that rock and roll really began when Elvis recorded “Mystery Train” in 1955.

“That was it,” Prisco says. “Nothing had sounded truly like that before.”

As Elvis profoundly changed American music, so too has the industry changed irrevocably—and Prisco believes there’s no going back to the days of “those big bangs—Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles and, some people will say, Michael Jackson—that’s not going to happen anymore the way everything’s so fragmented now and so immediate. He’ll always have that.”

Elvis has left the building, never to return, but his music is still rocking the halls.

Seekers: Roger Daltrey (L) and Pete Townshend of The Who rock the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Feb. 21, 2013, performing their classic Quadrophenia and other legendary hits to standing ovations. (Long Island Press/ Joe Nuzzo)

In the annals of rock there stand but a handful of bands whose very existence not only encapsulate the fury, attitude and glorious chaos of the genre, but have simply come to define it.

The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Floyd, Stooges, Ramones and Clash undoubtedly make this elite list; Hendrix, The Doors, Clapton, Bowie, New York Dolls, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, too.

The Who is unquestionably another, and founding members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend’s sold-out, lights-out performance at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Thursday, Feb. 21 is undeniable testament to the band’s ferocious legacy, nearly 50 years after they and John Entwistle and Keith Moon began destroying instruments together in 1964.

Not only do they still have it, in short, they absolutely killed.

PHOTO GALLERY: The Who at Nassau Coliseum Feb. 21

Touring in support of their Quadrophenia And More North American and European tour—one of their last gigs on this leg—the duo rolled through the rock opera flawlessly, exuding the same musical prowess and virtuosity they’ve become infamous for throughout the better part of half a century.

Quadrophenia, of course, is the band’s second rock opera and sixth studio album, released in 1973—the musical story of protagonist “Jimmy,” as reflected through the four band members’ personalities. From the liner notes on its vinyl sleeve: “A tough guy, a helpless dancer” [“Helpless Dancer,” Daltrey’s theme]; “A romantic, is it me for a moment?” [“Is It Me?” Entwistle]; “A bloody lunatic, I’ll even carry your bags” [“Bell Boy,” Moon]; “A beggar, a hypocrite, love reign o’er me” [“Love Reign O’er Me,” Townshend].

“Schizophrenic?” it reads. “I’m Bleeding Quadrophenic.”

Firstly, let’s just state the obvious: There are no replacements for John Entwistle and Keith Moon. Not for their musicianship, not for their personalities, not for their sheer presence. They were forces of nature. Irreplaceable. Not going to happen. The first date of the original Quadrophenia tour is forever cemented in rock mythology as the infamous gig in which Moon passed out onstage after ingesting elephant tranquilizers.

“Can anybody play the drums?” asked Townshend. “I mean somebody good.”

They had “somebody good” Thursday night: Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr’s son and Moon’s godchild. (Yes, Ringo Starr’s son and Moon’s godchild!) If anybody were to fill in for Keith, who died in 1978 at 32, I’d want Starkey. (Though Scot Halpin did a damn good job at that 1973 gig.) Starkey’s been rocking out with the rest of the band since 1996 and has also done stints with Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and Oasis, among others.

Filling in for Entwistle, as he’s done since Entwistle’s passing in 2002, was Pino Palladino—one of the most sought-after bassists around who’s played with too many artists and groups to list here. Backing up Townshend on guitar was his younger brother Simon, who’s collaborated with The Who in varying degrees since 1975.

Frank Simes, Loren Gold, John Corey, J. Greg Miller and Reggie Grisham rounded out the group on keyboards and brass, respectively. Vintage Trouble opened.

The band moved through energetic renditions of “I Am The Sea,” “The Real Me,” “Quadrophenia,” “Cut My Hair,” “The Punk and the Godfather,” “I’m One,” “The Dirty Jobs,” “Helpless Dancer” and “Is It In My Head”—archival footage of them destroying their gear melded with scenes of the ocean flashing behind and above them onstage from giant video screens, Townshend hammering windmills on a red and white Stratocaster and black and white Telecaster between switches to what resembled a Gibson Hummingbird. By “I’ve Had Enough,” Daltrey was swinging the microphone alongside him like a lasso before the music collapsed into a medley accentuated by an aqua-colored ocean of light drowning the audience that flirted with the album’s closer “Love, Reign O’er Me.”

It’s not as though Moon and Entwistle weren’t exactly present throughout the gig, either. The group’s outstanding 10-minute rendition of the Who classic “5:15” featured a several-minute long solo from the bassist, broadcast in all its finger-tapping glory from the aforementioned video screens, the place exploding with the roar of the sea while waves of red, white and purple light crashed upon them and basked the soon-departing New York Islander’s championship banners hanging from the rafters in an otherworldly glow.

The audience sang along, answering the chorus “Inside outside” with an echoing “Leave me a-a-lo-one!”

”Inside outside,” sang the duo. “No-where is ho-ome.”

“Inside outside, where have I be-en!? Out of my brain on the five-fif-teen,” they resounded.

Townshend and Daltrey plowed on, the guitarist dropping more windmills, strangling the red strat’s whammy bar and slapping its body while Daltry spun and slung the mic alongside him, beckoning to the crowd—the band steamrolling along like a well-oiled machine intent on saving each onlooker’s very souls, as they’ve done so many times before.

Townshend, who wrote the masterpiece double album and who’s deaf in one ear after Moon infamously detonated a drum set full of explosives during a 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, maintained his ferocity and command throughout “Sea and Sand” and “Drowned” into a pseudo-emotional “Bell Boy,” which featured archival footage of Moon on the screens, singing the song from behind his kit as Daltrey stood in homage, almost singing to him as he pointed at him.

People around me began rising to their feet, some holding beers, also pointing and singing along to the beloved wild man behind the drums with a gong.

The coliseum erupted into applause for Moon as slow-motion shots finished out the number and cascaded into more footage and sound of waves crashing along the shore, broken by the aching horns of “Doctor Jimmy.” Excellent version, by the way.

Another medley with quick tastes of “Bell Boy,” then into “The Rock” and another medley, with Mods on bikes behind them and guitar licks intermingling and bouncing off these unbelievable, bent and stretched notes exhaled from the horns, sustained the colors while Starkey slugged rail road-train drum rolls and Simon soloed his pseudo-Indian tones from a starburst Les Paul. The beats shifted into tribal patterns as Townshend’s searing squeals rode along them, then crisscrossed and became one again with crashing drums and Daltrey nowhere to be found.

The movement collapsed and slid into just absolutely searing guitars and horns, again momentarily touching, almost-kissing, the lips merely brushing against each other with “Love, Reign O’er Me” then retreating back to the sea. Violent images of protests and revolt blared behind the soundscape as Townshend pointed to the back rows, then returned to the medley punctuated by bleeding f****** horns and a quick shot of “Bell Boy” before fading into blue strobe lights, a roaring crowd and the tiny piano twinkling of “Love, Reign O’er Me.”

Daltrey stood stoic as multicolored lights melted around him, the crowd sending lightning stabs of whistles and shouts up his way. A painful, bleeding piano took flight as he confessed, “Only loooove, can make it raaaain,” atop pulsating synthesizers and Townshend’s descending guitar notes, culminating into earsplitting shrieks of “Looooo-ooove! Reign o’er me!” Daltrey’s shirt was fully unbuttoned as he begged.

The synthesizers moved beneath Daltrey during the verse, accentuated by smears of light dripping behind him while Townshend simply bent the living shit out of the lament’s heat-ripping notes from a Telly. Then Daltrey’s gut-churning bellows stabbed the air, tore through the crowd’s eardrums and were injected directly into their bloodstreams.

The entire coliseum rose as one in applause as the house lights were turned on and Townshend clapped his hands over his head.

“Thank you so much for coming out to see us tonight,” he said, as Daltrey tossed a tambourine to a kid in the third row. “So glad to be back in the fucking neighborhood.”

He then thanked the band individually, the roar of the audience unrelenting. It was 10:10 p.m. and the band launched into a devastating version of “Who Are You” as the crowd remained on their feet and sang along. More windmills, more flashing strobes, the entire coliseum was on fire.

Next was an emotional “Behind Blue Eyes,” featuring every single voice in attendance singing along, so much so the coliseum became one gigantic harmonious echo chamber. Then, an extraordinary rendition of “Pinball Wizard”—Townshend strumming while a million circles of tiny lights swirled among the crowd.

All of a sudden, you could hear it: the opening whirlwind that is unmistakably the classic and fan-favorite “Baba O’Riley.” Daltrey waved the microphone like a f****** sword as the defining chords hit. The audience, still on its feet, sang the bridge and the chorus with such force and passion that Daltrey never even attempted much of it himself, simply holding out the mic to the crowd. It was an unbelievable moment, people standing up and their arms outstretched to the sky in celebration through the end and into the beginning of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

The guitars of that rabble-rouser sliced through the air like chainsaws.

“New York!” shouted Daltrey. “Let’s hear it!”

Again the crowd filled in the blanks of the chorus, and once again many raised their arms in triumph. With the synthesizers still pulsating, the entire coliseum began clapping and stomping their feet along in time. Then, Daltrey at his finest—reclaiming the chorus from the crowd, it was he who yelped out the crushing, blood-curdling scream that closed out the number before saluting the captivated audience and tossing out another tambourine to another little kid in the third row.

The band then stood together, arms around each other, and posed, center-stage.

The cheers and applause deafening, Townsend picks up the acoustic while Daltrey explains to the crowd the next song, “Tea and Theater,” has to do with “one of the last of the merchant seaman,” “19 years old,” who on “Christmas Eve 1941…was torpedoed.”

“His name was Chuck Taylor,” he said. “This is for those guys.”

“Will you have some tea?” Daltrey asks, eyes closed, while the house lights turn purple and Townshend carefully terrorizes the guitar, head down, perched over and strumming.

“No one has said ‘thank you’ to the maestro Pete Townshend,” says Daltrey afterward, putting his arm around him and embracing each other.

For a split second, I thought Townshend may have considered smashing the guitar. I like to think he did.

“Thank you,” Daltrey told the audience. “May you be very happy. May you be very healthy. And extraordinarily lucky.”

With that, they left the stage to continued applause and cheers, the clamoring only waning when Johnny Cash began bellowing “Ring of Fire” through the house speakers.

Townsend and Daltrey sustain the legacy of the band. They keep the songs alive. And the music, well, the music speaks for itself. It still resonates, still inspires, still rocks. Still devastates.

Long live The Who.

The Who wrap up their 2013 North American Quadrophenia and More tour with a Feb. 28 benefit concert for Teen Cancer America and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center called Who Cares at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. The gig will also feature Elvis Costello & The Imposters.

The New York Islanders went 4-5 on the power play but lost to the Carolina Hurricane 6-4 on Monday, Feb. 11, 2013. They’re scheduled to face the New York Rangers at home on Thursday.

The blood spilled at the next professional hockey game on Long Island may not be from two stickmen slugging it out on the ice, but should get people cheering nonetheless.

The New York Islanders and the American Red Cross are teaming up for a blood drive at Nassau Coliseum before the NHL club plays the New Jersey Devils this weekend.

Donors will receive vouchers for two tickets to a 2012-13 Islanders regular season home game and a free entrée from Moe’s Southwest Grill as a thank you gift for helping replenish Long Island’s blood supply.

“By rolling up your sleeve, you may help provide lifesaving blood where and when it is needed,” said Donna Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Red Cross’ Northeast Division.

One healthy blood donor can save up to three lives in the half hour it takes to give.

The Islanders said turnout at the third annual event—the first of four planned blood drives at the Uniondale arena this year—is growing.

The Red Cross blood drive will take place in the Lower Box Office of the coliseum from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. before the puck drops at 7 p.m. Saturday, giving fans plenty of recovery time.

Walk-ins are welcome, but donors are encouraged to schedule an appointment by calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or by visiting redcrossblood.org.

New York Islanders

After a busy off-season, the Islanders will slap on the skates and get back on the ice for one of their last home openers at Nassau Coliseum Saturday before they skate off to Brooklyn in 2015 and bid farewell to the arena they’ve called home for four decades.

This weekend’s game against the reigning Eastern Conference Champion New Jersey Devils will mark the beginning of the end for a franchise in transition and one that’s in the awkward position of celebrating a future in Brooklyn that’s two years away while still trying to convince fans to come out to the coliseum for its 65 remaining homes games—barring any other strike-shortened seasons, of course.

So begins the Islanders 48-game truncated season delayed by a 119-day lockout that featured squabbling between millionaires (players) and billionaires (owners).

NHL fans, unfortunately, are used to the business side of the league, as are Islanders fans who have witnessed the team battle it out with politicians and other local officials year-after-year while team owner Charles Wang tried unsuccessfully to secure a new arena that would guarantee the Islanders remain in Nassau County.

In October, Wang decided he had enough of being strung along for the past decade and announced his intentions to move the Islanders to Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center, where the team will join the arena’s anchor tenant, the Brooklyn Nets.

“We tried very hard to keep the Islanders in their original home in Nassau County,” Wang told a sea of reporters on Oct. 24 of last year while announcing the move. “Unfortunately we were unable to achieve that dream.”

Wang’s last stand came two years ago when he and Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano spearheaded a $400 million taxpayer-funded proposal to rebuild the aging arena and re-energize the surrounding area. Taxpayers overwhelmingly voted down the referendum, forcing Wang to consider other options, which some Islanders fans feared included moving the team out of the state.

After five-straight losing seasons and plenty of unknowns over the years, frustrated Islanders fans finally get to put past turmoil aside for a moment to celebrate the team on the ice.

The puck will drop Saturday at 7 p.m. and the Islanders will host the Tampa Bay Lightning two days later, setting up a sprint to the finish that fans can only hope carries them into May and the NHL playoffs.

Now that 2012 firmly in the rear view, it’s high time for a little New Year’s retrospection to see what readers love most about us.

These are the top 10 most-read Press stories from last year, as voted by readers, based on the best metric known to journalism—the number of clicks each story got on our website over the past 12 months.

Some are predictable. Others make you wonder. Add them all up and it’s a list that reveals much about our readership’s interests and offers a trip down news memory lane.

10. LI Doctors Among 98 Arrested in Drug Raid: Long Island’s deadly prescription drug abuse epidemic continued to spiral out of control last year as authorities cracked down on dealers and the physicians accused of supplying them with black market pain pills. And still they’ve just scratched the surface.

9. Septic County: Remember how Suffolk County is slowly poisoning its own drinking and surface waters through its septic systems because most of the county lacks sewers? Yea, that’s still a monumental problem.

8. 100 Sickened, 1 Arrested at Nassau Coliseum: Right before Sandy, 100 intoxicated teens were hospitalized during a rave at the coliseum. And a helicopter pilot was arrested for landing near the chaotic scene for some reason. Unconfirmed rumors of up to seven people dying are likely what made this story so popular.

7. Amityville Horror: Second Gun Found? It’s been nearly 40 years since Ronald DeFeo murdered his family, but one filmmaker is among those who believe he didn’t act alone. The new evidence? A handle of a handgun found in the canal behind the house last year.

6. 4 LI High Schools Among Top 100 in US: It seems readers like good news, too. This one came when U.S. News & World Report ranked high schools in Rockville Centre, Jericho, Commack and Locust Valley among the nation’s best.

5. Paper Tiger: Newsday, once a flagship daily, has become a shell of its former after being bought by monopolistic Cablevision, the horrific cable company everyone hates. Its staff revealed to us the depth of their despair over the changes since the takeover.

4. Suffolk Authorities Dispel Serial Killer Suspect Rumors: Armchair detectives solved the Long Island Serial Killer case and broadcast their suspect’s name on the Internet. Except it turns out they were wrong, anyone can post anything to the Internet regardless of validity and the real detectives had to take the rare move to publicly stamp out false rumors.

3. Identifying Princess Doe: Thirty years after a teenage girl believed to be from Long Island was found dead of a brutal murder in a New Jersey cemetery, investigators continue their quest for justice for the unidentified victim.

2. Ripple Effect: While Suffolk has leaching septic tanks poisoning the aquifers that our drinking water comes from, residents of Bethpage and surrounding areas have carcinogenic toxic plumes from the region’s military industrial past to thank for death from the faucets.

1. Sandy: Anyone really surprised that the storm of the century topped this list? Although the homepage for all our coverage was most-clicked, if we listed every Sandy story separately, it would have taken up most of the top 10.