Such qualities, in addition to his stellar two-way defensive play, have brought great joy to Long Island. Schaefer skates fast, with a creativity, elegance, and zest that gets jaded fans yelping in falsetto disbelief. He can seem to defy physics; he also scores goals. He’s broken rookie records, including some of Bobby Orr’s. Fans and teammates are protective. When he’s checked roughly, the home crowd boos; when he dusts himself off, it roars. Todd Schaefer attends games frequently; at one, after his son took a big hit from a bruiser, “everybody’s eyes were on me,” he said, during a phone call. “So I did the, you know, cradling a baby and rocking it, like, ‘My baby!’ ” He laughed. “Then they booed the player for, like, two games straight.”