By Shelly Anderson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/penguins/
Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
A man dressed in a wedding dress holds up a sign for Sidney Crosby when the Penguins played the Canucks in Vancouver, British Columbia.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Was the cab driver radioing ahead, maybe tapping out Sidney Crosby's destination in Morse Code?
"We go out to dinner. We don't tell anybody where we're going," Crosby's Penguins teammate, Mike Rupp, recounted of a players' trip to a seafood restaurant while they were in town to play the Canucks this past weekend.
"We get there, and there's about 15 people waiting for him."
Crosby often gets mobbed in public, but he is uber popular in his native Canada, so a rare trip for him to the western provinces creates quite a buzz.
Add in the fact that this trip came about a month before Crosby will return here to represent host Canada in his first Olympics, and the crush really was on.
In all, five Penguins will play for three countries in the Vancouver Winter Games -- goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury also for Canada, center Evgeni Malkin and defenseman Sergei Gonchar for Russia, and defenseman Brooks Orpik for the United States -- and they got an initial taste of some of the sights as the city prepares to play host.
The other Olympians on the team weren't in quite as high demand as Crosby and so moved about more freely.
"We go walking around Vancouver and we see how beautiful it is here," Malkin said. "I enjoy it here."
Gonchar will be playing in his fourth Olympics. Even though the Penguins lost, 6-2, Saturday night, he still got a kick out of the idea of playing the Canucks at GM Place, which will be temporarily renamed Canada Hockey Place and serve as the main hockey venue for the Games.
"That's a first-time experience for me," Gonchar said. "It's going to be something special. If you think about it, we're not only playing in the same rink; we're playing in Canada, the home of hockey. That's why everybody's waiting for the Olympics."
Fleury and Orpik missed the chance to play here Saturday. Fleury has a broken left ring finger -- he missed the Penguins' previous game here, too, in December 2007, because he got a high ankle sprain a couple of nights earlier in Calgary -- and Orpik has an undisclosed injury.
The team had the day off yesterday, and Orpik and Fleury have a shot to play tomorrow night when the New York Islanders visit Mellon Arena.
For Crosby in particular, he got a preview of the attention from fans and demands on his time that no doubt will escalate during the Olympics.
He has a theory as to how they found him at the restaurant that night.
"I think they just followed the taxis," Crosby said. "That's the way it is. We're used to it now."
Well, Rupp, an American, might not be so accustomed to it.
"It just seems like it's everywhere you turn," Rupp said. "While we were eating, they were fine, respectful. When we were coming out of dinner, you're trying to get in the cab to leave and there's people running toward him. It's crazy. It's neat, but I'm sure it's got to be a hassle at times.
"I don't know how he does it, but he handles it real well. We all know that he's mature for his age."
Crosby, 22, got an idea of what this trip would be like on his first visit to western Canada with the Penguins in December 2007. He got mobbed by media and fans in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver despite going in and out of back doors and using extra security at times.
Things seemed a little more smooth this time, but that might be more because of his and the club's experience in dealing with the crush than any lessening of the crush.
"We learned last time," one Penguins official said. "The demands were the same, if not more, [this time], but we were more selective in what we did and didn't do so he didn't feel like he was running in 10 different directions. We probably overdid it a little last time."
Crosby didn't venture through the lobbies of the team's hotels. He didn't take the team bus to and from arenas, instead traveling in a separate car at a slightly different time.
That didn't stop some admirers in Vancouver, who followed his car to GM Place for Friday's practice. After that, NHL security personnel had police escort his car.
Crosby still did some extra things.
When the team was off Tuesday in Calgary, Crosby spoke at a packed press conference. He mentioned that he had only been up for half an hour after the team's late-night flight after a 4-3 loss at Minnesota.
In Edmonton the next day, the Penguins canceled their morning skate, but Crosby showed up at Rexall Place to answer more questions from reporters.
There were a ton of requests for his time on the three-game swing through western Canada that finished off a five-game road trip. He obliged when he could, doing extra interviews for the Canadian Olympic Committee and Hockey Canada, which is producing a documentary.
Like several of his teammates, Crosby had an unproductive night in the Vancouver loss, no shots or points and a plus-minus rating of minus-3. But distractions didn't stop him from amassing three goals, two assists on the five-game trip that started in Toronto, where he plays more often but still gets mobbed.
"Again, he handles it pretty darned good," Rupp said.
For more on the Penguins, read the Pens Plus blog with Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson at www.post-gazette.com/plus. Shelly Anderson can be reached at shanderson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1721.
Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
First published on January 18, 2010 at 12:00 am
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