Feb 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Paul Hunter
SPORTS REPORTER
The Toronto Star
It's a familiar scene: Sidney Crosby yapping in the middle of a scrum.
The setting, this time, is a low-lit corridor under the stands at Ricoh Coliseum. And the NHL's brightest young star is dutifully fielding questions moments after a Penguins practice.
"Every line is contributing every night ... we're happy to be competing for a spot in the playoffs ... just worried about winning, that's my biggest focus," the NHL's leading scorer says, as if by rote, neither the sweat nor the smile leaving his face.
Nine minutes in, a team flack jumps in to cut it off.
Crosby has his protectors off the ice. But the question being raised frequently these days is: "Who is looking after the league's future on it?"
Framed by highlights of impossible goals or breathtaking passes are frequent images of the 19-year-old being used like a pin cushion. A spear by Rob Blake here, a butt end from Maxim Lapierre there, a high stick from Francis Bouillon.
That kind of abuse prompted Don Cherry to preach from his CBC pulpit: "He cannot be whacked around like the way he gets whacked around. It's absolutely ridiculous the way he gets hit. He should have a guy running shotgun with him."
Crosby doesn't agree.
"We're working well right now with what I think you could call team toughness," he said. "We've got to make sure we're all sticking up for each other. There's not one guy I guess you could look to as a real enforcer, but I think each guy on the team takes it upon himself to really back the other guy up.
"Sometimes that's more intimidating than just one guy. I like our chemistry. There's no problem or issue there."
Crosby plays a unique game for someone his age and remarkable skill set. He drives hard into the danger areas around the net and battles for pucks. And he gets manhandled.
While no one expects him to get a free pass, some of Crosby's teammates think the league should do more to protect one of its greatest assets.
"I can see cheap shots all over the ice and, obviously, (league officials) have to do a better job protecting him," defenceman Sergei Gonchar said.
"He's the future of the league. He's advertising the game. He does everything for them to make sure that hockey is popular and hockey is moving forward. It's too bad they're not protecting him well enough."
In the pre-instigator days, it was a simpler world of instant retaliation. Touch a superstar and you paid the price. But the Pens have little interest in frontier justice.
"The guys aren't afraid to play the game or anything like that," said GM Ray Shero, whose father Fred turned intimidation into an art form while coaching the Flyers in the 1970s.
Shero said he has tough guys in the minors – Wade Brookbank and Matt Carkner – if things really get out of hand, but he said he's reluctant to change the chemistry on a team that is rocketing up the standings. One reason for Pittsburgh's hot streak – 10-0-2 in the last 12 games – is that coach Michel Therrien has been able to roll all four lines. Shero doesn't want to mess that up by acquiring a threatening presence who can't play; neither, it seems, do his players.
"I won a Stanley Cup with a team in Carolina that didn't have (an enforcer), so I'm not sold on the concept," Mark Recchi said.
Still, this is a new world for the hockey superstar. Wayne Gretzky, the player to whom Crosby is most compared, had a bodyguard in Dave Semenko and other protectors in Edmonton.
Long-time Edmonton hockey writer Jim Matheson tells a story of Oilers defenceman Lee Fogolin skating over to a centre lined up for a draw against a teenaged Gretzky and telling the Red Wing that if anything happened to No.99, he would personally carve the eyes out of the Detroit player's head. Oh, and spread the word, he added, likely with a smile.
These days, the only carving being done is of Crosby's reputation. Because he, figuratively, fights his own battles – and often tumbles to the ice when at the wrong end of a Synergy – he has been portrayed as a diver, a whiner and a faker.
"He doesn't whine. He just plays," Recchi said in passionate defence of his linemate.
"This kid takes more abuse than any young hockey player will take. Wayne never took this abuse. For whatever reason, people are tying to find negative stuff on this young gentleman who doesn't deserve it. This guy cares more about the NHL than any of these (media critics) will ever care about it.
"They should be feeding on the positives. Instead, they're trying to find negatives, which drives me absolutely up the wall."
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