Who is new Islanders business boss John Collins and what might his arrival mean?

WASHINGTON — The most interesting person at MetLife Stadium on Wednesday, where the NHL held a press conference to promote the Stadium Series, was one who was not on the dais.

That would be John Collins, who became the Islanders’ operating partner and made an investment in the organization in June. Since then, he has been running the team’s business operations.

Collins did not speak publicly Wednesday, nor has he since joining the Islanders, but his résumé is quite interesting.

Collins spent nearly 15 years as the NFL’s senior vice president of marketing, had a short stint as CEO and president of the Cleveland Browns, then worked as a higher-up in the NHL’s league office for nearly 10 years, including just under eight as chief operating officer.

Before joining the Islanders, he spent seven years adjacent to professional sports, working for a few different companies, including On Location Experiences — which partnered with leagues and other entities to sell live experiences.

Among the ideas Collins came up with while he worked under Gary Bettman: the Winter Classic.

“The idea of outdoor hockey, it’s not unique and, in fact, that game had been played in Edmonton and run by the club many many years ago [in the 2003 Heritage Classic],” Collins said on a Sloan Sports Conference panel in 2019. “And so when I got to the NHL, every time I would go into somebody’s office, there was a picture of that game in a football stadium up in Edmonton. The imagery was incredible. I kept saying, ‘By the way, what was that?’

“Everybody raved about the game, everybody raved about the imagery that came out of it. But then you said, ‘Why didn’t you ever do it again?’ It was like, ‘Well, it lost $4 million.’ And that was it.

“At the NHL, it was really a matter of trying to build scale for a sport that was perceived as being more niche, certainly in the U.S. But it was also about creating that business model that would be able to sustain the event. You didn’t have to make a lot of money. But you had to make money. You couldn’t just bet on it.”

Collins not only got the concept of an outdoor game to make money, he turned the idea into a series of marquee events. In addition to the annual Winter Classic, there is now a revamped Heritage Classic — which just so happened to take place in Edmonton last week — along with the Stadium Series.

We don’t have a strong idea of what Collins wants to do for the Islanders, other than that it will be separate from Lou Lamoriello’s role running hockey operations. But we know his reputation, and that is enough to know he will matter a lot behind the scenes.

Over time, that could end up meaning the Islanders even become a team that opens its doors for outside access — something that is the opposite to how Lamoriello runs things.

Collins gave a soliloquy at the Sloan conference in 2019 about the importance of giving fans an inside look — and it is probably not a coincidence that to promote the Winter Classic, the NHL had teams participate in HBO’s 24/7 series three times between 2011 and 2014.

Granted, in 2019, Collins was running On Location Experiences — a business predicated on giving fans a unique experience at live events. Still, this is something different from the Islanders’ current modus operandi.

“For me, even from when I was starting in the business at NFL Films, it was always about access,” Collins said on the panel. “The NFL’s not exactly the sport that offers the most access. Having just been for the first time ever at the Daytona 500, where they have people laying on the track and signing their name before the race and walking through the pits, it’s really incredible.

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to build out these experiences by giving people access that they’ve never had before. And that for me was a thread that I learned from Steve Sabol 20 years ago, where you watch the games on Sunday, you saw the highlights on ESPN, you heard it all talked about on Monday. And then on Thursday you would go to “Inside the NFL” and watch those highlights again because they had a different perspective, which had highlights of coaches and players and cinematography that you wouldn’t have been able to see, even though you already know what happened in the game.

“I don’t think it ever changed. I think it’s just at the core of why people are passionate of sports and entertainment, it’s about that access.”

Any impact like that will happen over time. But now that the Islanders are three years into a new arena, the novelty perhaps having worn off a bit, they will want to do everything possible to keep their attendance figures high after hovering around 99 percent capacity between 2021-23.

The best way to do that is to have a good hockey team, and Collins is not in charge of hockey operations. But fan engagement and marketing, presumably, fall under Collins’ purview. And it will be fascinating to see how he goes about it.

A schedule 180

One of the reasons to be a little bit wary about a 4-2-2 start, the Islanders’ best record through eight games in recent years: Six of their first eight games have been at home.

Taking advantage of that was a necessity, and the Islanders probably hit about the median expectation. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the points left on the table — particularly in overtime losses to the Devils and Red Wings — could end up mattering down the line.

The better test will come in the month of November, when just five of 14 games are at home.

That includes a trip to Boston, which has yet to lose in regulation; a swing through Western Canada, where the Oilers have Connor McDavid back from injury and the Canucks should be fired up for Bo Horvat’s return; and a jaunt to PNC Arena to face the playoff-foe Hurricanes (Carolina also comes to UBS Arena on Saturday for the first time since Paul Stastny’s overtime winner ended the Islanders’ 2022-23 season).

That should give us a pretty good idea what the Islanders are made of.

Want to catch a game? The Islanders schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.

Home whites

In a happy accident, the Islanders donned white sweaters at home on Monday night — a rarity since the NHL changed to dark colors at home in 2003-04.

That was essentially a favor to the Red Wings, who packed only their red sweaters for a two-game trip to Boston and Long Island, on account of the Bruins wanting to celebrate their centennial by wearing white at home against Original Six teams (such as Detroit).

So it did not portend a change in the Islanders’ uniform combinations. But perhaps it should.

Not only do the home whites happen to look better and cleaner than the normal blues — they also recall the club’s dynasty era.

The Islanders do as good a job as any team in the league of keeping their history front and center. What better way to continue doing that than going back to home whites?

That is probably an unrealistic ask — not least because it would create the same packing headache for visitors that resulted in Monday night’s uniform combinations, in reverse. But this was an accident that should produce some purpose.