The next time Long Island produces the likes of Jim Brown, Carl Yastrzemski or Dr. J, he might be wearing skates.

Mike Komisarek and Christopher Higgins of the Canadiens, Rob Scuderi of the Penguins and Eric Nystrom of the Flames can hang in there, on the sports food chain, with the Nassau-Suffolk alumni in the NFL. And you would be hard pressed to find four current Long Islanders in either Major League Baseball or the NBA that are as established as those skaters.

You can make the argument that hockey is becoming the Island's top sports export.

"I guess when you're a kid and you have big dreams, anything is possible," Komisarek said at Nassau Coliseum last weekend. "It's amazing where a little talent and a lot of hard work will take you."

The defenseman, who is on the NHL All-Star ballot, mentioned a stream of Long Islanders heading to Division I college hockey programs and added, "The sky is the limit for these kids."

"I don't think there was too much awareness for hockey a while ago," said Higgins, who scored a pivotal goal against the Islanders Nov. 1. "The game has obviously come a long way on Long Island."

But why? Have big dreams and hard work alone made the Island a place worth scouting? Hardly.

"They are receiving coaching from people who played at a high level - Division I, Europe or the NHL," said Phil DeGaetano, a Roslyn native and former minor-leaguer who played professionally in Italy, which led to his representing Italy in the 1994 Olympics.

Dave Starman of Lido Beach, a hockey analyst for CBS College Sports Network, former goalie at the University of Hartford and a longtime local junior coach, said, "There are so many highly qualified people on Long Island who have developed the junior hockey culture here, both on the ice and off it. We're a pretty motivated group, pretty competitive group and a pretty tight- knit group."

He added that the fraternity already is on its second generation, with former players coming back from college to coach here.

It says something that there are too many seasoned, accomplished hockey coaches on Long Island to list. But a few are known well beyond the Queens border. Frank Hillmann has won national titles in midget and junior B classes. Henry Lazar of Apple Core has made Long Island a place for college-bound players to play. His alumni include Scuderi and Nystrom.

Among the others are Dan Marshall, Ron Winicki and Aleksey Nikiforov, a Lithuanian who played for Dynamo Riga in the former Soviet Union before emigrating to the United States in 1991 and taking a job at The Rinx in Hauppauge.

"I was one of his first students," Higgins said. "I started with him when I was 9. I still skate with him in the summer. I could never afford to go to his lessons growing up and he let me go for free. I guess he saw something in me back then."

Komisarek said, "I was with Aleksey when I was 10, skating at 5 in the morning, before school."

These days, it is no fluke if a Long Island school kid makes the NHL. It's not a matter of "if" there will be anyone to follow the tracks of Richie Hansen in the 1970s and Peter and Chris Ferraro in the 1990s. It's a question of who will be next: possibly Nikiforov's son Vladimir, who was in Islanders camp, or Boston College senior defenseman Tim Filangieri, Boston University captain Matt Gilroy, University of Massachusetts standout James Marcou, Devils draftee Tony Romano of the Peterborough Petes or Pat Cannone of Miami of Ohio.

They all come from a part of the world that has deeper hockey roots than most people realize. It's not just luck, work and coaching that has made such fertile ground. It's the environment: the Ducks at Long Island Arena, the Rangers training in Long Beach and, most of all, what Eric Nystrom's dad and his teammates did.

"Having all the ex-Islanders around - Gerry Hart, Bob Nystrom - that has done wonders for Long Island hockey," said Higgins, who, in a way, is part of the dynasty's legacy.

"In scouting," Starman said, "there is a joke that when a team wins the Stanley Cup, you start scouting that area 15, 20 years later and you'll see a ton of players. Dads get caught up in the excitement and you get a huge surge in kids playing."

May 24th, 1980.  Just a week after the Grateful Dead had played three sold out shows at Nassau Coliseum, one of hockey's longest and strangest trips began as the Islanders captured the first of four consecutive Stanley Cup Championships.

The little team from Long Island, who almost went bankrupt years before, went on to form a dynasty equal to any in any other sport in sports history.  And it started with a goal from perhaps one of the most humble yet deserving players in New York hockey history, Bobby Nystrom.

Nystrom's redirection of a John Tonelli pass, on a play that started with a great backcheck from Lorne Henning (who intercepted the pass that sent the Islanders into transition), began something that has transformed hockey on Long Island.  While that goal sent all of us little Islanders' fans into a frenzy, it also started what became a boom of youth hockey on Long Island.

Because of that goal, and that team, young kids put down their baseball gloves and picked up hockey sticks.  More kids played, and more kids succeeded.  Thanks to the efforts of a lot of the players on those dynasty teams who stayed and settled on Long Island after their glory days were done, the level of play here has produced a number of Division I NCAA hockey players, and some professionals.  

Nystrom has been a visible member of LI youth hockey, and his son Eric (a first round draft pick of the Calgary Flames) just completed a great four year career at the University of Michigan.  Players like Gerry Hart, Richie Hansen, John Tonelli, Lorne Henning, Jean Potvin, Wayne Merrick and Ed Westfall are some who have contributed to the growth of the sport on LI.  

Those efforts have helped programs like the Royals, Gulls, Bobcats, Junior Islanders, Suffolk PAL, Apple Core, and Nassau County develop programs that have produced Division I players like Ryan Vesce (Cornell), Tom Galvin (Notre Dame), Mark Eaton (Notre Dame), Kenny Turano (Harvard), Bobby Gepfort and Joe Grimaldi (Nebraska-Omaha), Marty Hughes (BC), Kevin Schaeffer (BU), Scott Birnstill
(Northeastern), James Brannigan (Colorado College), Mike Brennan (BC), and Vin Hellmeyer (Yale) just to name a few.

Cornell coach Mike Schaffer said to me last season that he never thought ten years ago when he took over at Cornell that he'd have a team captain hail from LI.  "I'd have told you that you were crazy" he said. Just last week, another Long Island kid just committed to the Big Red after a youth hockey career with the Royals, PAL and Bobcats.

While that goal still brings a chill and gets the goose bumps going, what it is has meant 25 years later goes beyond what anyone could have imagined in the grand history of the NHL, or the recent history of hockey here on Long Island.