Sunday, February 07, 2010
By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Sidney Crosby: "In Canada, everybody expects the best. So, if you bring that mentality back with you over an 82-game season, you expect the best every day. That's a good mentality to have."
By the time the torch is lit Friday to open the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the American narrative will have been foretold by a national media always seeking the next cereal-box icon: There will be superb skiier Lindsey Vonn, flamehaired snowboarder Shaun White and speedskating ace Apolo Anton Ohno.
Not in the eyes of the host nation, though.
In Canada, these will be the Sidney Games.
Sidney Crosby, perhaps the most precocious athlete in Pittsburgh's history, captain of the Stanley Cup champion Penguins and the undisputed face of the National Hockey League, is about to go home and represent his country for the first time in major international competition.
And that home will be delighted to have him back.
"Hockey's not a game in Canada. It's a religion," said former Penguins winger Bob Errey, an Ontario native who now is a broadcaster with the team. "And Sidney Crosby is not really just Troy and Trina's boy. He's Canada's boy. It's been that way since Sid was 13. The whole country watched him grow up, they watched him win the Cup, and now he's about to play for his country right there in his country. This is it. This is his time."
The player
Not so long ago, it was another 22-year-old Pittsburgher's time in a strikingly similar role.
It was Sept. 15, 1987, a month after Crosby was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the nation was transfixed by the climactic game between Canada and the Soviet Union, hockey's ultimate Goliath-vs.-Goliath matchup, in an international tournament called the Canada Cup that preceded the NHL's entry into the Olympics.
And this was Mario Lemieux's time.
With less than two minutes left and a 5-5 tie, he was rushing up ice on a three-on-one, with the living legend Wayne Gretzky as a trailer, and Larry Murphy to his right available for an easy tap-in. Either option looked golden. Instead, he took matters into his own hands and whizzed a wrist shot over the glove of helpless goaltender Sergei Mylnikov.
Gretzky leaped into Lemieux's arms, and the crowd in Hamilton, Ontario, along with citizens from coast to coast, soon would celebrate a championship and a new Canadian hero.
"I'm well aware of it, just growing up a Canadian and a fan of hockey," Crosby said. "We all grew up seeing it a lot."
For Lemieux, it was all new: Shooting rather than passing. Winning. Getting top billing above Gretzky.
Phil Bourque, Lemieux's teammate in Pittsburgh then and a team broadcaster now, remembered watching that game at a bar in Bethel Park where the patrons were pulling "like crazy" for Canada.
"I just thought, 'Wow. I didn't know Mario had that level.' You knew he was special because of what he'd already done, but this was what he could do in big games with great players. He didn't have great players when he was here."
The Penguins were losers to that point in Lemieux's career and, despite a wealth of goals and assists, he had not come close to his individual peak, either: He was no leader, staying reserved partly because he still spoke far better French than English, and even his passion for the game came into question.
Upon returning ...
"There was a different confidence, more of a bounce to his step," Bourque said. "And he never let go of that level."
This, obviously, is where the similaries with Crosby diverge.
Already on Crosby's resume are the 2009 Cup, two trips to the final, a scoring title and a nearly reverential respect across the sport's spectrum. He has been mature beyond his years, a captain since he was 19 and hockey's enthusiastic off-ice ambassador in every city he visits. And anyone questioning his work ethic should have seen him Monday morning at Mellon Arena, taking the ice for an optional skate between two games roughly 24 hours apart and bouncing about the rink like a rookie.
Later that night, he torched the Buffalo Sabres for a hat trick.
This is not someone in need of a career boost.
Until this season, Crosby largely struggled on faceoffs. Now, he is coach Dan Bylsma's top choice in the defensive zone. Until this season, he scored on about a third of his shootout attempts. Now, he is 6 for 7, tops in the NHL. Until this season, he was primarily a passer. Now, he ranks third in the NHL with 37 goals, on pace to shatter his previous season high of 39.
Ken Hitchcock, an assistant coach with Canada, recently summed that up: "He plays a perfect game."
Ask Bourque if Crosby could benefit from the Olympics as Lemieux did from that Canada Cup, and he grasps for an answer.
"I don't know how much better he can get as a player. And I don't know how much more mature he can get," Bourque said. "Could it make him more creative? Is that possible? Maybe playing with the best Canadian players against the best in the world, on that stage, might give him more confidence, more reinforcement about what it takes to win big games."
After a pause, he shrugged and concluded, "Really, it might just reinforce that everything Sid does now is the right thing."
Errey has no easier time with the question.
"Mario was just taking off in '87, but Sid ... I don't know. What more is there to bring to his game or even to his persona?"
Crosby, perhaps not surprisingly, quickly came up with an answer.
"I think I always try to learn from other guys," he said. "There are just a lot of detail things you learn from being around great players, from a new coaching staff, from the competition you face. I'm sure that's how Mario must have felt back then: You bring those lessons back with you. In Canada, everybody expects the best. So, if you bring that mentality back with you over an 82-game season, you expect the best every day. That's a good mentality to have."
One possibility for a Crosby impact will be a ruboff: His linemates in Vancouver are expected to be All-Star power forwards Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames and Rick Nash of the Columbus Blue Jackets, as per the combination at Canada's brief camp last summer in Alberta.
Nash has played for nothing but losers in Columbus, so might he benefit?
"We'll push each other," Crosby said to that point.
The patriot
A new television ad for Tim Horton's, Canada's famous donut chain named for a hockey player, is narrated by Crosby over a soft piano and images from his childhood to Pittsburgh.
"Hockey's our game. But really, it's much more than just a game. It's a passion that brings us all together. On frozen ponds. At the community rink. And in our living rooms. It's the feeling you had the first time you stepped on the ice. The feeling you had when you scored your first goal."
A clip of Crosby scoring as a 5-year-old is shown.
To end it, Crosby is speaking at his locker, his words now overlapping with the words of a videotaped interview from his early teens.
"Wouldn't it be amazing getting up every day and playing something that you love to do?"
Crosby will have four fellow Penguins at the Olympics: Marc-Andre Fleury will join him with Canada, Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar will play for Russia, and Brooks Orpik for the United States.
And all anyone needs to know about Crosby's conviction in that advertisement is this line from the other day: "I don't think Gonch is going into the corner thinking I'm going to let up. I'll hit him. That's the way it is."
And Gonchar, just across the way, promised, "I'll hit back."
That is how it has been since the NHL entered the Olympics in 1998.
There is no comparison among North American sports: Major League Baseball sends its top players to a World Baseball Classic, but it comes during spring training and includes strict limits on pitchers. The NBA sends a different version of its Dream Team to each Olympics, but the U.S. enters as an overwhelming favorite every time. The NFL has no such venture.
With the NHL, the season does not merely go on hold. It goes forgotten.
"We've been together for a while now," Crosby said of the other Penguins. "But I think we all realize what's bigger than that. It's about representing your country and representing it well. That's just the way it is. You put everything else aside and try to win a hockey game."
There also is no comparison for how Canadians view this tournament. Canada has 574,000 registered hockey players, roughly 2 percent of its population of 33 million, and they play on more than 3,000 rinks. All figures are No. 1 in the world.
"Look, Canadians realize that the sport is everywhere, but they don't want to give up being No. 1," Errey said. "Whether it's hockey played at any level, it's supported immensely, right down to the communities. Mothers and families build their earnings around how to pay for their children playing hockey."
One easily can envision a picture of immense pressure on Crosby:
• This is Canada's first Olympics with NHL players, and it might be the last anywhere: The league has not yet committed to Sochi, Russia, for 2014.
• The Canadian roster is so deep that experts feel the country could form a second roster that could compete for gold. The Penguins' Jordan Staal, among the game's top young centers, did not make the cut.
• This tournament follows Canada's 2006 embarrassing seventh-place finish in Turin, Italy, which some still blame on organizers leaving an 18-year-old Crosby off the roster.
• No athlete at the Games will receive more attention than Crosby, something already evident from the Penguins' swing through Western Canada last month, when full news conferences were called. Vancouver 2010 organizers have not yet said if special arrangements will be made for Crosby -- rather than the standard group interview areas -- but those are expected.
If all that is not enough, consider this recent remark from Canada goaltender Martin Brodeur, the New Jersey Devils' star: "Sid is totally on a different planet than anybody else. The expectation of him is so great. It is for all of us, but this guy is the big guy. He's just like Gretz or Mario. That's what he has to face every single day."
Those close to Crosby insist that, because little changes in his life day to day -- "I pretty much stay in my room," he said last month. "No shopping or anything like that" -- little could change him in Vancouver.
"This means a lot to Sid, so he's going to put a lot of pressure on himself," Penguins winger Pascal Dupuis said. "He's a proud person, a proud hockey player and a proud Canadian. But that's not something new. He's going there to win, just like he does here."
"Sid eats, sleeps and breathes hockey," Errey said. "I don't think this will be much different for him."
Crosby sounds ready to embrace the stage.
"As Canadian players, we all grow up dreaming of playing for Team Canada, and we realize the pressure and expectations that come with that," he said. "I think, as a fan, you'd always see Canada's best out there and expect the best result. That's good for us. There's never going to be a question, when someone's representing Canada in hockey, whether they're working hard or sacrificing all they can."
Crosby will be an alternate captain for Canada -- Scott Niedermayer of the Anaheim Ducks will wear the C -- but it surely will be Crosby whose status will rise the most with a home victory.
And that is saying something.
"Oh, they already love him a lot up there," Fleury said. "Every time we go to Canada, the people are following us everywhere, driving their cars after our bus, hanging out at the hotel. It's pretty crazy. And now, he's going to be in Canada playing for Canada. It's unbelievable how that's going to be."
Unbelievable?
No, that would come if, on the final day of this month, Crosby would skate into the Russian zone on a three-on-one, the puck on his stick and a gold medal in his sights.
What would he do, if he had Murphy available for a tap-in?
"Well, I know Murphy was wide open. But I definitely would shoot. Mario did the right thing."
Dejan Kovacevic: dkovacevic@post-gazette.com. Find more coverage at our Dejan Kovacevic at the Olympics blog.
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First published on February 7, 2010 at 12:00 am
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