By DAVE STUBBS, The Montreal Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/index.html
May 1, 2010 4:10 AM
Sidney Crosby stepped off Mellon Arena ice mid-pack following the Penguins' morning skate yesterday and the team's dressing room opened to the media a moment later.
Surely a coincidence.
Crosby then was scrummed, first by a huge crowd of television media, then by a wave of print journalists. The sessions lasted a respective four minutes and 38 seconds and 4:30.
Surely a coincidence.
PITTSBURGH - APRIL 30: Sidney Crosby(notes) #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins controls the puck around the net as PK Subban(notes) #76 of the Montreal Canadiens pursues in Game One of the Eastern Conference Semifinals during the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on April 30, 2010 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)Crosby, the player and the brand, was highly polished yesterday morning, before he would assist twice and be named the first star in the Penguins' 6-3 Game 1 victory.
To say he was polished is not a complaint; it's simply a fact. The young man who wears the pants in the Penguins family made careful eye contact with each of his inquisitors, spoke not an inordinate number of playoff clichés, and even took a bit of a dig at the Washington Capitals, a team for which he has no particular love.
Sitting beneath a battered, perspiration-crusted Penguins cap that looked to be a decade old - this is its first season - Crosby was sailing very still seas, doing nothing to provoke nor overly praise his opponent.
And you listened, not necessarily because his content was riveting, but because he was Sid the Growing Kid.
Crosby is the NHL's surviving icon this playoff season, the Capitals' Alex Ovechkin having begun his offseason well before the league got its highly coveted head-to-head series between the mercurial Russian and the all-Canadian from Cole Harbour, N.S.
The dressing room was packed, a game of human bumper-cars. Yet a stern attendant was herding one and all clumsily around the team logo on the carpeted floor because, heaven knows, the only thing worse than publicly stepping on a duck is stepping on a penguin.
It's been some kind of 10 months for Crosby, three months shy of 23 yet seemingly forever in our consciousness.
He shouldered the Stanley Cup as Penguins captain last June, scored the goal this February that forever will be remembered as the one that earned Olympic gold on Vancouver ice, and fired 51 goals this NHL season, tying him with Tampa Bay's Steven Stamkos for the league's Rocket Richard Trophy as its leading goal-scorer.
Crosby entered the season eager to improve two parts of his game he felt were flagging - finding the net and faceoffs. Today, he shares the Richard trophy and was the league's best on draws.
On Thursday, Crosby was named one of three finalists, with Ovechkin and Vancouver's Henrik Sedin, for the NHL's Hart Trophy, awarded to the player judged to be most valuable to his team. Crosby won the prize in 2007.
None of that has his head in the clouds today, not during the second of what he hopes will be four rounds of playoff hockey.
"It's been good," Crosby said of his recent past. "It's good to be rewarded, but it's always about the next challenge. You work hard to get those opportunities. I don't think I've put in any less work since then. And I don't think that hunger or wanting to succeed changes."
The Olympics, which made his already brilliant star even more lustrous, already seem like they were years ago.
"I haven't really thought about (the Games) a lot," Crosby admitted. "At the time, it seemed a pretty popular subject for a few weeks. But it seemed to kind of change and it's a good thing. I'm happy to focus on things here."
There will be no tugging at his heartstrings in the semifinal about his childhood love of the Canadiens, the team that drafted his father, Troy, in the 12th round (240th overall) in 1984, three years before Crosby was born. Everyone else can talk about his years-ago fixation with the bleu-blanc-rouge, Canadiens-themed photos and even his CH-logo'd baby bottle on display at the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame.
"It's more of a storyline than anything," he said of his link to the Habs. "The playoffs are intense and emotional, and I guess that adds to it, but nothing changes, really."
He spoke complimentarily, but not effusively, about superb Montreal goalie Jaroslav Halak, and how the Penguins would not change their game to solve him.
He added a few thoughts about the long, effective stick of Canadiens defenceman Hal Gill, a teammate last year in Pittsburgh, and the keys to a good Penguins power play, which included making Halak's life miserable in the crease.
And interesting was Crosby's take on why the Capitals, the league's best team through the regular season, shockingly failed to advance past the Canadiens into the second round.
"I find it hard to believe that a team wouldn't get respect in the playoffs," Crosby said, dismissing that idea. "(The Capitals) didn't score. They didn't execute. That's what it came down to. Montreal did a better job of that.
"The reason Montreal won is because they were good (in special-teams play) and Washington wasn't. It wasn't a question of respect."
Of course, Ovechkin, a sometimes bitter rival, is captain of the Capitals.
Surely a coincidence.
dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com
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