No. 1 Pick Crosby May Live With Lemieux Family First Season

Sunday, July 31, 2005
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

OTTAWA -- The Penguins yesterday landed not only a potential next franchise savior, a hot-ticket commodity and a playmaking center for Mario Lemieux's line, but they also might have found a new babysitter for the Lemieux family.

Canadian teen icon Sidney Crosby quite possibly could be moving in with Mario, Nathalie and their four children.

"If it's there, I'll gladly take the offer," Crosby, 17, said moments after slipping on a No. 87 Penguins jersey and Penguins cap handed him by the part-owner/player with whom he has shared a friendship and a Southern California trainer for the past 18 months.

Sharing the same roof? He and Lemieux discussed the possibility over a Penguins/Crosby camp dinner at a restaurant Friday night, just hours before the sterile 2005 NHL Entry Draft was held in the Westin Hotel's Confederation Ballroom, in front of only team personnel, league types and the media. Lemieux left the decision to Crosby, who sounded keen on the idea -- embraced by his parents, Troy and Trina of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia -- that he billet with an experienced player. There may be no one more suited than a former potential franchise savior, hot-ticket commodity and playmaking center who was a No. 1 draft pick after a nationally monitored career in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Yes, the Big Guy has traveled the same path as the 5-foot-11, 193-pound Crosby.

"Obviously, I'm young," added the humble Crosby, star of the QMJHL's Rimouski Oceanic, Team Canada's 2005 World Junior Championships winner and Reebok hockey merchandise coming soon to an outlet near you. "I'm going to be a rookie. Hopefully, if I get to play in Pittsburgh next year" -- as if his ability remains a question -- "I'll get the opportunity to learn from one of the best ... and try to be a sponge.

"I'm going to learn as much as I can on the ice, but off the ice there couldn't be anyone better [than Lemieux]."

So how will Lemieux handle those babysitting fees?

"Put that in the contract," he said.

There was one small piece of irony yesterday: The 1984 first-overall pick escorted Crosby to a Penguins draft table where Lemieux refused to report a generation ago, all due to his agents' ire over slogging, predraft contract talks with the club.

Signing Crosby could be something of an adventure, if only for the fact that such negotiations often are slow and bumpy. Penguins general manager Craig Patrick had protracted talks with the agents representing Marc-Andre Fleury, the first pick in the 2003 draft and, coincidentally, a teen-ager who bunked with the Lemieux family for one week before Fleury's representatives pulled him from there and Penguins training camp in a bid to budge stalled talks. He signed soon after, but never returned to the Lemieux's Sewickley abode as a resident.

This live-in arrangement worked well for Lemieux 21 years ago, when he lived with the Mathews family of Mt. Lebanon. Such an indoctrination seems in order for the Next Mario from the Quebec League, especially one whom Lemieux so enjoys that he once gave the kid a sunrise-hour ride to the Los Angeles airport after time together with Venice, Calif., trainer T.R. Goodman.

"I want to make this adjustment as [smooth] as possible," Crosby said. "I know it'll take a little time to feel comfortable with the size and speed of the game."

Adjusting to Pittsburghese might take a while longer, although this kid became fluently bilingual by learning French his first year in the Quebec League. He won't come to Pittsburgh for a fortnight, minimum, because the young man is going west. First, he wants to spend a week training in suburban Los Angeles and then report to Team Canada's Vancouver/Whistler, B.C., camp for World Junior Championship prospects Aug. 10-15 -- though it's doubtful his new boss/landlord/linemate would allow him to play in that tournament next winter.

Crosby is a two-time scoring champion over all of Canada's major-junior hockey leagues -- Quebec, Ontario and Western -- and the undisputed young king of the country's native sport.
The coronation was completed this weekend in the nation's capital. He was whisked from one photo op to the next, packed the new Ottawa Senators practice rink for a simple youth clinic. His drafting yesterday launched three-plus hours of news conferences, satellite-TV interviews and photo sessions.

"It's busy," Crosby said after it all. This from a fellow who gave his first media interview at age 7, a fellow who attracts Canadian cameras and microphones as if he's super-magnetized. "I've been involved with the World Juniors and the Memorial Cup. The NHL is definitely busy."

Friday, a day before he officially became a Penguin, Crosby signs autographs at one of the many public events surrounding the draft this weekend in Ottawa.Click photo for larger image.
Three hours after his selection, the Penguins got to the anticlimactic business of making six far less consequential picks, some of whom are bound never to see their ice. In the second round, they drafted left winger Michael Gergen of the same Shattuck-St. Mary's High that Crosby once attended. Then, they plucked rising defenseman Kristopher Letang from Val d'Or in the third round, Finnish defenseman Tommi Leinonen in the fourth, blossoming right winger Tim Crowder of South Surrey, B.C., in the fifth, eye-of-the-beholder defenseman Jean-Philippe Paquet of Shawinigan in the sixth and St. Louis-born forward Joe Vitale in the seventh.

One pick not on the board yesterday, yet vital to the upcoming season for Penguins and Crosby and the Youth Movement, was 2004 second-overall selection Evgeni Malkin. He and his family back in Russia continue to mull over the possibility of him coming to America and joining the Penguins, something club officials seek next.

No word yet if the Lemieuxs have enough room for two boarders.

(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)