The bond between hockey and the tiny province of Nova Scotia is unique and storied -- and runs much deeper than the relatively small list of 64 NHLers who were born and raised in Canada's second-smallest province.

Supreme Court of Nova Scotia Justice Thomas Chandler Haliburton, born in Windsor, wrote about playing "hurley" as early as 1844. Halifax native James George Aylwin Creighton is credited with organizing the first recorded indoor ice hockey match, held in Montreal in 1875. The Stannus Street Rink in Windsor, though no longer in use, is the oldest standing ice rink in Canada, having been built in 1897.

But it's not all about ancient history in Nova Scotia (approx. population of 935,000). The New York Rangers played regular-season neutral site games in Halifax in 1993 and 1994, and there were Stanley Cup parades in New Glasgow for Jon Sim of Dallas in 1999 and New Jersey's Colin White in 2000 and 2003. The CHL Memorial Cup was played in 2000, the World Junior Championships in 2003, the Women's World Championships in 2004 and the Men's World Championships in 2008.

The inaugural Kraft Hockeyville competition of 2006 was won by the Nova Scotia community of Salmon River, beating out 450 other entries from across the country. Their reward was seeing the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Ottawa Senators 7-3 in a preseason game.

What Nova Scotia lacks in size, it makes up for in a passion for hockey that boarders on tribal. "Don't let our small size fool you; Nova Scotia has always been a fertile breeding ground for hockey talent," Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly wrote in an e-mail to NHL.com.

"We looked forward to hockey season every winter, obviously," said White, a defenseman for the Devils. "Growing up, playing a lot of road hockey after school, on the weekends and during the summer. There was always some sort of hockey, whether you were on the ice or not. I don't think we were on as much as the kids today, but you could always find a game somewhere.

"Playing in the NHL was a far-fetched dream then for us kids. More and more people have come along lately. When I was growing up there was Mike McPhee and Al MacInnis, guys like that…Wendell Young. There wasn't a whole lot, and you really didn't think it was possible. But today, with guys like Sidney Crosby, coming from the Maritimes, and having more to do with the QMJHL too…there's a lot of Maritime teams now, which there didn't use to be. There's now more opportunity for Nova Scotian kids, and it's not such a far-fetched dream anymore."

Especially not when Crosby, hockey's brightest star, is the proud son of Cole Harbour, a suburb of Halifax. He is on course to become the province's second Hall of Famer, the first being MacInnis, a defenseman who was inducted in 2009. "I'm certainly proud of where I come from," said MacInnis, who played 23 seasons with Calgary and St. Louis. "With the players coming out of there today, the likes of Sidney Crosby, it's not going to last long. I actually told Sidney at the (NHL) Awards in Vancouver last year that I was kind of upset because someone mentioned to me that I was maybe the top player that ever came out of Nova Scotia. I worked 23 years to get that and it ended after four months of Sidney Crosby being in the NHL. We got a good chuckle out of it."

On August 7, Mayor Kelly declared Sidney Crosby Day in Halifax when the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins triumphantly brought his first Stanley Cup home for an estimated crowd of 75,000. "When superstar Sid Crosby brought the Stanley Cup home to Nova Scotia this summer, it was one more reminder of our province's long-time affinity with professional hockey," Kelly said.

To put in perspective the odds facing an aspiring NHLer in Nova Scotia, last season alone there were 204 Ontario-born players who appeared in at least one game in the League. That's more than triple the number of players from Nova Scotia in NHL history.

"But in this day and age, there's a lot of Maritime teams, there's a lot of scouts in the Maritimes now, and hockey has picked up east of Toronto," White said. "If you've got something special, someone is going to hear about it. Hockey is a small world, so you're going to hear about a kid. Look at Crosby -- he was 10-11 years old and people were already talking about him, so if a kid is that special he's going to get noticed no matter where he is. And when scouts are going to watch (him), both those teams get looked at too. So the opportunity is out there more and more."

Nova Scotia is predominantly a blue-collar province dependent on its fishing, lumber and mining industries and offshore drilling for oil and gas, though non-resource based companies in financial services, information technology and aerospace are beginning to thrive. So when a local hockey player makes good and rises through the ranks to reach the NHL, the entire province revels in the success of one of its own.

"The inclusion of so many of our young men in the NHL has inspired decades of youngsters to believe in their on-ice dreams. Those Nova Scotians who've made it to the big league represent living proof that skill and talent are what counts when it comes to getting noticed, no matter how far away you live from the big arenas," Kelly said.

"But for us, hockey is more than just the game; it's about staying connected to one's roots. The time that so many NHL players reinvest in the community-at-large during the off-season doesn't go unnoticed. So many of those who play our national game have such a sense of community, they represent all that is good about our country.

"Sid Crosby personifies that inspiration perfectly. He didn't just breeze through with Lord Stanley this summer; he actually stayed in our midst to chat and patiently answer countless questions from legions of fans.

"We love his down-to-earth demeanor and the fact he seems as proud of us as we are of him. Sid is an ongoing inspiration for a whole new generation of Nova Scotian hockey players to be the best they can be, both on-ice and off."

Contact Rocky Bonanno at rbonanno@nhl.com