There is no telling what tomorrow will bring, let alone 2031. But as long-term bets go, one could do worse than to predict Ilya Sorokin and Igor Shesterkin still will be in net when the Islanders and Rangers meet a decade hence.
Sure, there are many obstacles on that road, including injury, performance, free agency and other vagaries of life. Who knows? Maybe the 2030s will bring robot goaltenders to counter the danger of 140-mile-per-hour slap shots.
But when the two 25-year-old Russians, longtime off-ice friends and on-ice rivals from the old country, took the ice on Sunday night at Nassau Coliseum, anything seemed possible, including that someday this game will be regarded as an important historical artifact.