The Stanley Cup spent Wednesday morning in Hauppauge. Brandon Bussi, the 27 year old Carolina Hurricanes goaltender who grew up in Sound Beach, carried hockey's championship trophy into The Rinx on Terry Road, the rink where he first pulled on goalie equipment as a kid. Every player on a Cup winning team gets one day with the trophy, and Bussi chose to spend his on Long Island.

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine declared it Brandon Bussi Day, and the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame named him its first Suffolk sports person of the year. The morning session ran from 10:30 to 11:45, with young players from a rink clinic getting a look at the Cup in the building where a lot of them skate every week.

From the waiver wire to a shutout in Vegas

Almost nothing about Bussi's path suggested this ending. He went undrafted out of Western Michigan University, then spent three seasons with Providence, the Boston Bruins' American Hockey League affiliate, without getting a call to Boston. He signed a free agent deal with the Florida Panthers, and Florida waived him before the season even started. Carolina claimed him off waivers on October 5. Nine days later he made his NHL debut against San Jose.

Then the season turned into the kind of story that gets a movie option. Bussi went 31-6-2 in the regular season with a 2.47 goals against average. In the Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden Knights, he came on in relief midway through Game 3, started the final three games of the series, and won all of them. The last one was the whole career in one night: a 22 save, 3-0 shutout at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that clinched the franchise's second championship and its first since 2006. He became just the third goaltender in NHL history to record a shutout in a Cup clinching game during his first NHL season, and he lifted the trophy exactly eight months after his league debut.

A first for Suffolk County

Long Island has produced a Cup winner before. Rob Scuderi, who grew up in Syosset, won it with Pittsburgh in 2009 and again with Los Angeles. But Scuderi is a Nassau story. Bussi is the first player raised in Suffolk County to get his name engraved on the Cup, which is why the county came out with a proclamation for a goalie who, a year ago, was an American League name only diehards knew.

The evening stop carries its own nod to that history. Bussi's party is bringing the Cup by boat to the Nautical Mile in Freeport, to Bracco's Clam and Oyster Bar at 319 Woodcleft Avenue, the same waterfront spot where Scuderi celebrated his championships. From 6 to 9 tonight, the Cup is there and the event is open to the public.

What this looks like from the boards

The Rinx is where Bussi says his hockey life started, the first place he ever put on the pads. That detail is the reason a Cup day matters more here than at an arena press event. Long Island's rinks have sent plenty of players to Division I programs and a handful to the NHL, but the trophy itself has almost never passed through the buildings where those careers begin. On Wednesday it sat in one, at eye level with a generation of Suffolk kids who now know exactly what the ceiling is.

For anyone who wants to see it in person, the window is tonight. Bracco's sits in the middle of the Nautical Mile, parking on Woodcleft Avenue is scarce on a summer evening, and the Cup leaves at 9. A kid from Sound Beach carried it home. For three hours, it belongs to everybody here.