I wore my Islanders jacket proudly

In 1978, fate chose me, a kid from Brooklyn, to become a lifelong fan of the New York Islanders.

My mother had purchased satin spring jackets for my older brother and me. My brother got first dibs and picked the New York Rangers jacket because he was a fan of the team. So I got the Islanders jacket.

I was 9 and only vaguely aware of the Islanders. I was a passionate Mets fan, addicted to baseball and the terrible team playing in Flushing.

Living in Brooklyn, I learned that most of the other kids who followed professional hockey liked the Rangers. I started following the Islanders and began to fall for them when they lost in the 1978 playoffs to the inferior but tougher Toronto Maple Leafs.

I recall my uncle agreeing with me that the Islanders were better than the Leafs, but the Leafs used dirty play to steal the series (on a heartbreaking overtime goal in Game 7). Predisposed to rooting for underdogs and bad teams in general (hello late-'70s Mets), the loss only intensified my interest in the Islanders.

1979 was even worse for us Islanders fans. The Isles had a terrific season and were heavily favored to beat the Rangers and head to their first-ever finals. But the Rangers' goalie -- John Davidson -- stole the series with his acrobatic saves, and the Islanders lost in six games. That one hurt badly,

The next year, the Islanders had a mediocre season, but at the end they engineered a trade for Butch Goring, the second-line center the team had long needed. As every Islander fan knows, this time the team dispatched the bullies, the Big Bad Bruins of Boston, on their way to face the formidable Philadelphia Flyers.

On May 24, 1980, at 7 minutes, 11 seconds in overtime, "Mr. Islander," Bobby Nystrom, scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal, sending me screaming ecstatically throughout my house (after all, I was born at 7 pounds and 11 ounces!). I don't recall any reaction from my brother or my father, both Rangers fans.

Over the next several years, my love for the team grew to genuine fanaticism. I listened to or watched every game, hiding a transistor radio under my pillow. I knew the number of every player -- I still do! -- and his statistics. As I got older, I realized how special the team was, arguably the best team in hockey history and perhaps New York sports history.

I often lobbied my father to take me to an Islanders game, but he made the Nassau Coliseum seem like it was a million miles away, much too far from our home in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn for us to attend a game. It was "all the way out on the Island," he would say, as if the team played in Montauk.

Although he was a big sports fan, my father didn't enjoy attending sporting events; he had an aversion to crowds. My brother considered himself lucky that our father took him to one Rangers game a year. I didn't attend my first Islanders game until the 1983-84 season, when a friend and his family invited me to go with them.

For me, there's a striking irony to the Islanders leaving Long Island, my home for the past 14 years, for Brooklyn, where I lived until I was 24.

My three children are all big Islanders fans (not that they really had a choice), and I've promised that we will attend games at the Barclays Center. It won't be as convenient as heading to Uniondale, that's for sure.

I've already heard from friends that it's a pain to get there and the sight lines are nowhere as good as those at the Nassau Coliseum. Parking, too, is apparently a nightmare, according to people who have been there for concerts. But whenever I think of the team's move, I remind myself that Brooklyn is not that far away. It's not Montauk.

Reader Jeff Siegel lives in Valley Stream.