Does Barclays Center have 4,000 obstructed seats for hockey? Maybe not, but reason to believe at least 2,795

I missed this one, but it's worth another look.... CBS 2 columnist Peter Schwartz on 9/29/14 wrote The Good, Bad And Obstructed Of Islanders Hockey At Barclays, reacting to Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark's claim that the arena had only 400 seats for hockey with an obstructed view:

That’s all well and good, but Yormark may have forgotten a zero in his estimation of obstructed seats. I was told by an Islanders source that there are about 4,000 seats with some sort of obstructed view.

Schwartz's number has not been confirmed, nor repeated. But it's worth another look. After all, even if it's an overstatement, it may be closer to reality than current claims.

Remember, John Sparks, then the Barclays Center General Manager, in June 2012 said there'd be only 14,500 seats for hockey, of which about 1,500 would be obstructed.

That means 13,000 unobstructed seats.

The total number of seats for sale was then increased to 15,813, then tweaked to 15,795, the current number available, with 400 seats obstructed, as I wrote.

But if you follow Sparks's reasoning, they're selling 2,795 obstructed seats.

Perhaps "obstructed" is a term of art, and there are levels of obstruction. But the arena GM was not exactly a source aiming to make the arena look bad.

So, if you go by his number, that's 2,395 more than advertised.

More than 400, surely

Let's also look at a 9/27/14 New York Times article, Fans Come to See Isles in Future Home. Not All Succeed.:

The view from several hundred other seats at one end of the rink was also obstructed, though arena officials said many of those would not be offered for sale when the team starts play there next year.
“The seats with horrible views, they are off the manifest,” said Brett Yormark, the chief executive officer of Barclays Center, which is also home to the Nets.
Yormark said that about 400 of the 15,795 seats that will be sold next season for hockey would have some obstruction. Those tickets will be clearly marked.
But Yormark did not share many specifics on which seats would be excluded when the Islanders arrive. A pregame walk at one end of the arena found far more than 400 seats with obstructed views.
Seven sections had no view of the goal at one end of the building. Most seats in nine other sections had a view of the net, but not of the near corner of the rink.

(Emphasis added)