How Sidney Crosby developed into hockey's latest wunderkind
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
OTTAWA -- Don't judge the Penguins' latest savior by his hotel room. What a mess. Not because of a lack of neatness, either. It's just that Sidney Crosby, heralded across Canada as the The Next Great One after The Great Wayne Gretzky bestowed the comparison, got into an argument with the best friend who happens to be the next-best prospect in yesterday's NHL draft.
So he and Jack Johnson settled their Thursday night argument in a logical, teen-aged manner.
They wrestled for it.
Despite the fact Johnson stands 2 inches taller and 10 pounds heavier. You could imagine the gasp such a free-for-all would have induced from Penguins management, had they known it involved their No. 1 overall draft pick yesterday and their hope for years of tomorrows.
"The room's kind of a shambles right now," Johnson said the next afternoon. "That's Sid. He's competitive about anything."
Crosby has carried a nation's hockey expectations for almost four years. But the challenge was there that day, and he refuses to pass up one of those.
Tomorrows? He cannot think of that, with the morning workout, the weight-lifting, the daily regimen that often includes an early lights-out. Sidney Crosby reached this pinnacle, this exalted place where he was seemingly canonized at this draft in Canada's spectacular capital city, because of grasping each day for its sweat, toil, focus, ice time. No. 87, a number derived from his upcoming 18th birth date of 8/7/87, is hockey 24/7. Except for when he's goofing off like the teen-ager that he is, somewhere deep down in his 5-foot-11, 193-pound frame.
"The main thing with me is, try not to look too far down the road," Crosby said at his third news conference of the day Friday, a day when he was paraded before nearly 2,000 fans pushing closer for his autograph ("it's like the Beatles," said his agent, Pat Brisson). "Worry about the present. The future will take care of itself."
This must be how a kid takes to hockey with such panache that he's giving his first media interview at age 7, to The Daily News in nearby Halifax, Nova Scotia.
This must be how a kid raises such a Canadian commotion that he is signed by Brisson and the famed International Management Group at 15, scolded at 16 on national television for hot-dogging, and crowned both the youngest winner of the country's junior-hockey scoring title and the youngest goal-scorer in Team Canada history in the World Juniors -- over previous team 16-year-olds named Eric Lindros and Gretzky.
This must be how a kid signs lucrative Reebok and Gatorade deals at 17, becomes not only the subject of two books but a key marketing prong in the NHL's relaunch before he even makes his pro debut, and infuses a Penguins franchise with rocketing ticket sales, immediate playoff-contention plans and one tremendous asset for a foundation of hope that concrete might soon be poured for a new Downtown arena.
Cole Harbour is a fishing village a 10-minute drive -- or ferry ride -- east of the Nova Scotia twin cities of Dartmouth and the capital Halifax. It's a vast region, numbering only 350,000 souls, who on Atlantic time are an hour ahead of us, but in no hurry.
"Fishermen, working people -- there's not too many factories there," described Penguins scout Gilles Meloche. "And they take life easy."
Troy Crosby, a former Quebec Major Junior Hockey League goalie torched by one Mario Lemieux a generation ago, and his wife Trina had this little boy. When Sidney first grabbed a stick at age 2, it was as if his DNA was perfectly assigned: He immediately went into a perfect shooter's grip. When he took to skating, he whizzed across the ice. It wasn't merely his father's genes, either. His mother came from a hockey family, with brothers Harry and more so Robbie Forbes -- a 1981-82 Laval Voisins teammate of Lemieux -- known across Nova Scotia for their ability to make the puck dance.
"I don't know if he's genetically predisposed for hockey, but he's at least genetically predisposed to be a great athlete," Robbie Forbes told The Halifax Herald this week. Crosby has been universally proclaimed the draft's greatest prospect since Lemieux in 1984. Of that connection, Forbes added: "It's a little bit ironic, for sure. Even at that age you knew he was destined to be something spectacular, and Sidney brings out those same types of emotions. You just know there's something special."
Perhaps that explains why Troy Crosby built a roller-blade rink in the family basement, and the kid pounded pucks off the washer and dryer all night long. Amazingly, the dryer still works.
Nova Scotia caught on early to the Crosby phenom. "When he first stepped on the ice as a Timbits Novice, I thought he might have registered in the wrong group because of his ability to skate. Even at age 5. Tremendous skater. Hands above the other guys," recalled Paul Gallagher, twice Crosby's coach and now a scout for the St. Louis Blues.
Canada came to embrace him at age 14, in 2002, on a team called the Dartmouth Subways. Crosby played on a Major Midget club of 16- and 17-year-olds, and "he tore things up, basically," said Subways Coach Brad Crossley. At 13, Crosby made the prestigious Maritimes team but wasn't allowed to play by the local governing body, which maintained he was too young. A year later, still two and three years younger than the rest, he rang up 106 goals. And 217 points. And a plus-103 rating.
"We all knew what he could do here," said Crossley, whose team went 61-17-5 that splendid season. "But when he showed what he could do at the national level, it was really his coming-out party."
Too young at 15 to play in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Crosby found a hockey outlet south of the border. Minnesota's Shattuck-St. Mary's parochial school was playing in the same Calgary tournament as Crosby's Dartmouth team, and Shattuck Coach Tom Ward admittedly tried to make the rink rounds so he would bump into Troy Crosby. Never happened. Yet when Ward returned to the Faribault, Minn., school, he found in his e-mail a message from the Crosby's father inquiring about attending.
"I think he enjoyed his time away from the limelight in Canada, where he was the next great whoever," the straight-talking Ward said. "No one gave a spit who he was walking down the halls here. He's not just a big, dumb jock, either. He's worldly for being a young boy. He's got his wits about him."
Living in a dormitory room with Calgary native Ryan Duncan, a junior one year ahead of him, and playing on an esteemed prep team with players a couple of years older, Crosby tried to keep a low profile -- as low as a shooting star can. He scored 72 goals and 162 points in 57 Shattuck games on a team that won the scholastic national championship.
"You could tell back then, not the way he played, but the way he handled himself off the ice that he would be the No. 1 pick," said Jack Johnson, the fellow Shattuck sophomore that season and best friend who spent last week in Cole Harbour with the Crosbys.
"He was real serious about things, focused."
"I think that's what makes Sidney Crosby the way he is," said Duncan the old roommate. "The way he prepares himself off the ice, his focus, sacrifices he makes. He'll go to bed early and miss going out and chasing after girls like most 15-year-olds."
The next season, Crosby was the opening pick by the woebegone Rimouski Oceanic and the darling of Sher-Wood, the stick company that signed him to a five-year deal before he played a junior game. Soon enough, this teen was filling the net with goals, QMJHL barns with fans and the national media with breathy descriptions. "Sidney is the greatest thing to happen to junior hockey since Mario," said Marc Lachapelle, who chronicled both for the Journal de Montreal.
He was profiled in Sports Illustrated. He was chastised on national television by Don Cherry -- Canada's hockey cross between the late Howard Cosell and Rush Limbaugh -- for being a hot dog after a game in which he picked up the puck on the blade of his stick and wrapped it around the right post for a lacrosse-style goal. Too young to vote, he was named one of the 100 people of power and influence by The Hockey News. He scored 135 points in 59 games in 2003-04 and added -- ahem, Penguins watchers -- 66 goals and 168 points in 62 games this season.
Last January, after he steered his country to its first gold medal in the World Junior Championships since 1997, all of Canada seemed to be searching for his stolen, red Team Canada sweater (it was finally found in a west-Montreal mailbox). Meanwhile, his white sweater was fetching $22,100 for charity on eBay.
Everywhere, there are comparisons and contrasts.
Marcel Dionne, Pat LaFontaine, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic and Paul Kariya are but a few of the lesser names invoked; the first two are Hall of Famers, the rest appear well on their way.
Gretzky once proclaimed Crosby the best player he'd seen since Mario Lemieux, then predicted Crosby could break The Great One's NHL scoring records. Crosby was 15 then.
"He's more of a [Peter] Forsberg-type, the way he plays; he's very physical in the corners," said Lemieux, who worked out alongside Crosby with a trainer in Venice, Calif., and played pickup games when that workout gang hit the ice. Added the Penguins' part-owner/player, "Very strong on his skates. Anticipates the play very well. A great passion. He's just ... a great player."
When the NHL performed its draft lottery July 22, the Penguins had a 6.25 percent chance of getting the top pick.
When Commissioner Gary Bettman got to the envelopes of the final five teams, Penguins Vice President Tom McMillan inhaled audibly before a roomful of media watching on satellite television at Mellon Arena: "I gotta sit down for this." Five, four ... McMillan couldn't sit still. Three. Then the final two: either the Mighty Ducks or the Penguins would pick No. 1.
And the envelope read: Penguins. "Quite a day for us," Lemieux fairly gushed.
Yet as much as folks marvel at Crosby's sturdy legs, his speed and vision, his uncanny ice sense, they adore the makeup, the drive, the inner workings of this teen seven days shy of his 18th birthday.
"For him to be where he is today, he's faced a lot of pressure," said Don Waddell, the Atlanta Thrashers general manager and executive vice president. "Forget about him as a player, he's an outstanding person, too."
"There won't be much of a transition period," said Stan Butler, a commentator and coach who worked with Crosby at IMG camps, where he would have to shoo the star pupil off, the last to leave the ice. "He's too bright. Sid'll figure it out in the NHL pretty quick."
"He handles himself like he's 25 years old already. It won't be a culture shock for him" in the NHL, said Gilles Meloche, the Penguins' Quebec league scout and a longtime pro goaltender who played with Lemieux and against Gretzky. "He's going to get his share of points, but you can't expect miracles the first year or two."
Oh, maybe not just the first year or two.
(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)
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