Penguins star Sidney Crosby brings a more mature game into Sunday's showdown against Washington

By Tarik El-Bashir
Washington Post staff writer
Sunday, February 7, 2010; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/sports/

If Alex Ovechkin is Washington's most beloved athlete, then Sidney Crosby is the most hated.

But there's one thing even the most die-hard Capitals fans cannot deny about the Pittsburgh Penguins captain: He's a generational talent and, after leading his team to the Stanley Cup in June, he has toiled to transform himself into an even better player than he was last May, when he doused Washington's Stanley Cup dreams in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.


Penguins center Sidney Crosby, left, against Alex Ovechkin during Game 1 of last year's playoff series, is on pace for 53 goals this season. (Jonathan Newton/the Washington Post)

Already celebrated as one of the game's best passers, Crosby, whose Penguins visit Verizon Center on Sunday in a pre-Super Bowl showdown, has added a new wrinkle to his game this season. The 22-year-old center is shooting more and shooting to score and, as result, ranks third in goals, just one behind Ovechkin and San Jose's Patrick Marleau. With 37 goals through Saturday's games, Crosby is on pace for 53, which would be 20 more goals than the 33 he averaged during his first four NHL seasons.

"I have some good speed and can create some chances that way," he said. "But I'm not going to overpower guys all the time. If you have a good shot, you can be effective even from areas that might not typically be great scoring areas. If you can be dangerous there, then you keep guys guessing."

Despite a debilitating snowstorm that struck the Washington region Friday and Saturday, league officials anticipated that Sunday's game -- advertised as the league's marquee matchup and set to air on NBC -- would go on as scheduled. After losing, 5-3, in Montreal on Saturday, Crosby and the Penguins planned to fly to Newark and then take a bus to get to Washington in time to face the Capitals, who are riding a 13-game winning streak.

Although the Capitals have only faced Pittsburgh once this season, a 6-3 win on Jan. 21, Coach Bruce Boudreau has seen enough highlights of Crosby scoring goals to know that he's a more complete player than in the past.

"Sidney looked and said, 'You know what? I'm already doing everything,'" Boudreau said. "Former MVP. Won the Cup. But I think I can score more goals. How do I go about that? It takes a rare person to be that smart, to say, 'You know what? I'm going to take a 100 more shots a year, and if I can already get 30 goals, I can get 50 with another 100 shots.' "

Crosby's prodigious talent was obvious almost from the first time he skated as a 3-year-old. What became evident a few years later, his father Troy Crosby said, was something else that can't be taught: an insatiable desire to be the best.

"He's always been that way," said Troy, who is a fixture most nights at Mellon Arena. "Whether it was a mistake he made in a game, a shot on a goal that didn't go in, or he didn't receive a pass properly, or he fanned on a shot, he would work on it after practice."

The elder Crosby, a former goaltender, won a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship with Verdun and was drafted 240th overall by the Montreal Canadiens in 1984. He fell short of his goal of playing in the NHL but remained enthusiastic about the game. He has lived out that passion through his son, who spent his peewee years in the basement of the family home in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, shooting pucks into a clothes dryer and busting it up so badly it looked "like a Dalmatian dog," Troy said.

Four and half years after he was drafted first overall by the Penguins, the impact Crosby has had on the once-troubled franchise is impossible to ignore. In fact, the evidence is several stories tall and sits across the street from the team's decrepit arena. Consol Energy Center, a dazzling $321 million glass-and-red-brick arena, is scheduled to open in time for the start of next season.

"It's appropriate that he lives at [team owner and hockey legend] Mario Lemieux's house because he saved the Penguins at least three times, and Sidney Crosby has saved them at least once in his career," NBC analyst Pierre McGuire said. "He won't have to do it again because that's how good the team will be while he is there."

With 169 goals, 300 assists and a career plus-minus rating of plus-38, there's a lot to like about Crosby's game. But what league insiders like most about Crosby, based on the improvements he has made in his first four seasons, is that his best is yet to come.

As a rookie, Crosby gained the reputation as a whiner and a diver. He was also assessed 110 minutes in penalties. For the most part, he has eliminated the penalties and whining from his game, though the reputation still follows him.

"If anyone watched me now, I think they would see a pretty dramatic change, at least I hope they would," he said.

Entering the 2008-09 season, Crosby focused on being more effective in the faceoff circle. At first, the improvement was incremental. But through Friday's games he ranked ninth in the league, winning 57.4 percent of his draws.

Then, over the summer, he decided to take more shots in an effort to become tougher to defend. He has taken 211 shots, which has him on pace for 304, 28 percent more than he took a season ago.

"Greatness is usually guys who aren't afraid to make changes and that usually makes them better," said McGuire, who has covered Crosby since he was 16. "Greatness doesn't come easy."

Since being drafted, Crosby has spent his winters living in Lemieux's guest house in suburban Pittsburgh, eliciting some good-natured ribbing from teammates and harsh criticism outside of the Penguins' dressing room.
"I'm not going to lie, I've got it good here," he said. "I have a very good setup here. But I don't see myself living here past this year. I can say with a lot of confidence that I will be moving out."

Back-to-back runs to the Stanley Cup finals, he acknowledged, cut into his home-shopping time. And there's a good chance he'll find himself short on personal time again this spring. If that happens, that likely will mean he'll be spending some time in Washington, playing in front of the sea of red-clad fans who love to hate him.

"It's right there," Crosby said when asked if Pittsburgh-Washington rivals the bitter intrastate Pittsburgh-Philadelphia blood feud. "I don't think anyone would have thought that was possible."

Asked if he noticed hundreds of fans sucking on pacifiers at Verizon Center in March 2008 -- it was Washingtonians' way of calling Crosby a crybaby -- he said he did not. After a laugh, he added, "I just try to focus on playing."

Troy Crosby, though, can't help but get annoyed by the fans' antics on F Street.

"I've been to two games in Washington and, as a parent, you have to bite your tongue," he said. "You don't like it. I went to the bathroom [during the 2006-07 season] and saw the [pictures of Sidney] in the urinals. It's not a very pleasant thing to see."

"But," he added after a pause, "I always told Sidney when he was younger that they don't boo the bums. If they're booing you, you must be doing something they don't like."