Apple Core Trio Shine at USA Hoc

Bob Scuderi remembers the doubters.

His oldest son, Rob, was steadily improving as a defenseman, getting noticed as a teenager in games around Long Island. Bob heard the same refrain from nearly everyone who saw Rob play:

"You'll never get anywhere if you stay here."

"Here" meant on Long Island, where Bob and his wife, Leslie, grew up, where they lived, in Beth.page, and where he worked as a Nassau County highway patrolman. Where Rob and his younger brother, Ken, attended St. Anthony's.

And where hardly any pro hockey players are produced.

Bob Scuderi can smile at those naysayers now, because Rob and the Penguins are a handful of wins away from the Stanley Cup. Rob Scuderi is sometimes barely mentioned on a team that features two of the best young players in the game, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, plus Marian Hossa, Ryan Malone, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury -- the list goes on a while before you get to Scuderi, a 29-year-old, stay-at-home defenseman with exactly 23 points in his NHL career, which is a bad month for Crosby or Malkin.

But he is noteworthy as one of only four current Penguins who go back to the pre-lockout era with the team. And if the Penguins can get past the Flyers in the Eastern Conference final -- Game 2 is Sunday in Pittsburgh -- then win the team's first Stanley Cup since 1992, Scuderi will become even more noteworthy around here:

The first Long Island-born player to win a Cup.

"And we're even more proud of him because he did it the right way; he never took any shortcuts," said Henry Lazar, who coached Scuderi with the New York Apple Core, the Atlantic Beach-based junior team that is the elite team for Long Island hockey players. "Rob just kept developing, kept improving, and that's how he got his shot."

Scuderi isn't the best-known Long Islander in the NHL these days. Canadiens Mike Komi.sarek and Chris Higgins were supposed to be Cup contenders this year, and the Flames' Eric Nystrom has a championship pedigree. But Scuderi is the only one of the four who stayed and played through his junior years on the Island -- Komisarek and Nystrom played for the U.S. developmental team in Michigan, and Higgins went to high school in Connecticut at Avon Old Farms, where Brian Leetch went to high school.

Scuderi played for Apple Core from 1995-97, and the program had just begun in 1993. The team won a national "junior B" title in 1996, and started drawing players from off the island, as well. Mark Eaton, Scuderi's Penguins teammate who's out with a knee injury, traveled from Wilmington, Del., to play for Apple Core.

"We got a couple offers for prep school, but it was a $10,000 scholarship and the school cost $15,000," Bob Scuderi said. "St. Anthony's was $3,500. And we never really wanted the boys to be somewhere else before it was time for college."

Scuderi's play with Apple Core got him noticed. Lazar dined at the Scuderis with Boston College coach Jerry York and Boston University coach Jack Parker on their home visits; a handful of other schools were interested, too. Scuderi chose BC and won a national championship in 2001.

He also stayed all four years there, despite being drafted by the Penguins in the fifth round of the 1998 draft. And, after 2½ seasons with the Penguins' farm team in Wilkes-Barre, he made his debut in February of 2004, at the end of yet another dismal season for the Penguins.

"We were definitely struggling when I got here," Rob Scuderi said. "Honestly, you could see some of the pieces then, though, with and Ryan . Then when we got Sid and Geno, things took off."

There have been Stanley Cup champions from nearby Long Island -- Chris Drury from across the sound in Connecticut, Joe Mullen (with the Penguins) and Mathieu Schneider from New York City, Jim Dowd from New Jersey. And the Islanders' run of four straight Cups from 1980-83 is an achievement fans hold dear; it certainly made fans out of plenty of parents whose kids took up the sport.

But a native winning would mean something different. Especially one who didn't leave to learn the game.

"I don't know if you'd call it vindication, but it was tough with that old train of thought," said Bob Scuderi, who took up the game when his boys were young and still plays in retirement from the highway patrol. "Both my sons just loved the game when they were young, and they were willing to play anywhere."

As for Lazar, whose program has grown exponentially over the years and boasts more than 100 collegiate players among the alumni, he has one wish.

"I just hope Rob comes back to play in our alumni game in the summer and brings the Cup with him," he said. "That would be something, to show the result of all that hard work he put in."