Two subway stops from Barclays Center, where the Islanders will play a regular-season home game for the first time Friday, are remnants of the Americans, the hockey team that almost played N.H.L. games in Brooklyn.

An exhibition at the Brooklyn Historical Society recounts the story of the team known as the Amerks, a colorful yet downtrodden franchise that existed from 1925 to 1942, preceding the Rangers by a season and then skating as their co-tenant at Madison Square Garden.

The Americans practiced at the Brooklyn Ice Palace, about a mile from the nexus of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, where Barclays Center now stands. The former Americans defenseman Red Dutton, who also coached the team, tried unsuccessfully as the team’s league-appointed manager in the 1940s to escape the Garden and move the franchise to Brooklyn. A decade later, the Dodgers departed for Los Angeles, and Brooklyn was left without a major professional sports franchise until the Nets moved there in 2012.

The exhibition refers to the Americans as “Hockey’s Forgotten Promise.” The Islanders will fulfill that promise of seven decades ago when they host the Chicago Blackhawks, the first regular-season N.H.L. game to be played in Brooklyn.