Uniondale, N.Y.

Clarence Campbell was among 12,221 spectators at the first regular-season NHL game at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Oct. 7, 1972—42 years ago Tuesday. Campbell, then the NHL commissioner, called the arena “magnificent.”

Campbell died in 1984, but Nassau Coliseum is still around, dressed up for the New York Islanders’ final season there. Many adjectives have been used to describe the arena in recent years, but magnificent isn’t one of them. Some fans call it the Mausoleum.

Others have called it a “barn”—a species of old-school arenas that are dying out in the NHL, whose season begins Wednesday night.

Barns, as the name suggests, are spartan. The Coliseum’s 16,170 seats not only lack legroom; they also don’t match. Some seats in the upper levels are so worn that you can’t tell for sure what color they are. The arena’s corridors are so narrow that fenced-in “beer gardens” had to be created outside the building itself.