No. 265: SIDNEY CROSBY AT 37 / Don't try to tell him it's winding down
The takeaway from the opening game of the Four Nations: There have been others this great, but not this great this late.
Yeah Ralph, you and Sid.
I don’t know if anything Sidney Crosby does over the next few days will adjust or raise his place in hockey history. Whenever conversation turns to listing of the GOATs, four names are thrown out there at the very start: Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux and Howe. People feel the need to rank them in descending order because … well, I dunno. It’s just in our DNA, I guess. Dating back to Neanderthals sitting around and discussed the greatest cave artists. Conversation at the Last Supper surely landing on ranking commandments. No métier would be too high falutin’ not to give in to the impulse—I’m sure a bunch of tall foreheads sit around labs all day and between the filling of beakers and test tubes weigh in with their ranking of the greatest elements on the periodic table, a lot of wasted O2.
Can we make expand the Group of Four to a Group of Five? And when Alexander Ovechkin passes Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career goal-scoring record, will that further expand to a Group of Six? Probably. That’s saying nothing about the merits. It’s just a matter of human nature and recency bias. For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to find 87 a seat at the table and to include Ovechkin in that next tier which would include Jean Beliveau, Doug Harvey, Jaromir Jagr, Bobby Hull, Dominik Hasek and, projecting a little, Connor McDavid. I’m probably leaving someone out, but I’m clustering, not ranking. None of it should offend any of the living legends nor those self-appointed protectors of legacies.
Now I’m not inclined to weigh on on all matters Crosby again—having written two books about his career, in 2005 and 2019, I have little unsaid. And who’d listen? As it turns out, in 2019, nobody when I gave a reading at the Cole Harbour library adjoining the arena where Sid skated as a kindergartener in a Timbits league. For the most excruciating experience in my checkered publishing career, check out: No. 73: SIDNEY CROSBY / More like "Least Valuable." My library reading in Sid's backyard. (You’ll need at least a trial paid subscription to access it.)
My Crosby treatise from 2019.
Still, if Crosby is playing international hockey, I’ll sit up and pay attention—the first time I saw him play and talked to him was his first opportunity to represent Canada at the summer under-18s back in 2003, when his name had yet to surface in a newspaper outside the province of Nova Scotia. Check out: No. 170: SIDNEY CROSBY / Before the famous victories that everyone watched, the brutally tough loss that no saw. (Again, same deal, a trial paid subscription necessary.)
Last night’s game doesn’t cement my case for Crosby, but you can give it a number and enter it into evidence. The Canadian team’s 4-3 OT victory over Sweden was a nailbiter—fans could be forgiven if they thought it would be a romp after the home team took a 1-0 lead in the first minute on a Nathan MacKinnon goal set up artfully by Crosby with a no-look pass through traffic, a flash of teasing genius like a grandmaster playing blindfold chess.
The game tightened up significantly thereafter, though, and surely the Canadians would have lost if Sid wasn’t available, a matter in doubt this week after he missed a couple of Penguins games on the weekend with what was framed as “an upper-body injury.”
I thought Crosby’s most impressive moment came on his assist on Mark Stone’s goal, which put the home team up 2-0. Sid of yore might have blown by Gustav Forsling in that situation, but no matter—Forsling wasn’t going to get the puck off him.
And while the set-up of Mitch Marner’s game-winner wasn’t as dazzling as the opening act, it was no less impressive—a 37-year-old out there, driving play in a three-on-three situation, six minutes into OT. The explosive burst and power might not be there like it was ten years ago, but the hockey sense and vision hasn’t diminished, not a bit.
For the list makers, try this one on for size: Who ranks as the greatest at age 37.5, Crosby age at this typing? Orr was done at that point. Gretzky was the player you saw in Nagano, in the middle of a season when he’d score 23 goals with a desultory Rangers team. At age 37, Lemieux played 10 games, scoring one goal, with the 2003-04 Penguins. Only Howe measures up for sustaining his game late in his career: Starting the 1968-69 season at age 40, he scored 44 goals and rang up 103 points, earning a First Al-Star berth, like he would the next season and the season after that.
Sid’s not going to be a First All-Star this season, but then again, this isn’t Gordie Howe’s NHL either—back in 1968-69, the level of play (a virtually 100 percent Canadian league, diluted after expansion to 12 teams) and pace made it possible for the elder Howe to skate and excel in his dotage. Their respective situations, though, were very comparable, what with the ‘69 Red Wings and the ‘25 Penguins well out of the playoffs.
Could Howe have risen to the moment for a crucial game like Crosby did last night? I want to believe he could—he was deep in his 40s when he played with the WHA team that took on the Soviets and he absolutely terrified them, throwing monster hits. Even holding out that as a possibility in no way makes Crosby’s performance any less remarkable. The Four Nations is a goofy idea, but i’m all for it if it gives him a chance to play meaningful games this season—after a couple of seasons without them and no prospect going forward in Pittsburgh. No one should bet against him playing and having an impact at the Olympics next year.
RARE are the times I wish I was at a game, but last night would be up there. The atmosphere reminded me of a game I went to 20 years ago on Saturday: On Feb 15, 2005, I drove up to Quebec to take in Crosby and the Rimouski Oceanic taking on the host Remparts. Now appreciate the timing:
This was Crosby’s draft year. He was a known quantity, having skated with the world junior team that had mopped up at the U-20s in North Dakota a month before, probably the best outfit ever assembled at the tournament.
This was the middle of a winter without NHL hockey—the owners had locked out the players in a showdown between Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow. That the Commish is still around and the whereabouts of the former NHLPA exec are unknown tell all you need to know.
The game at the Colisée fell in the middle of the Quebec Winter Carnival, an event that’s really worth attending if you ever get a chance. I have three times and I wish I could get back there again—and I say that as someone who hates snow and cold.
Anyway, in an attempt to time travel, I pulled out what I wrote about that game and that night. (It was folded into the first Crosby book that I wrote.) Did I ever imagine that twenty years later I’d be writing about Crosby at the top of the game? So long ago and my memory file on such matters isn’t comprehensive. If you had asked me then if he’d still be playing and excelling at age 37, I’d have thought his game would in that case be closer to Gretzky’s and Lemieux’s than Howe’s. It’s a pity that the only meaningful games Crosby will play this season and next will be for Canada, but it beats the alternative. As for a 2018 World Cup, when Crosby would be 41, don’t bet against it.
My Crosby book from 2005, first edition, has the best portrait of Sid, standing in an Oceanic uni on the frozen St Lawrence. The pic originally ran with a profile I wrote for ESPN The Magazine.
Without further ado, from 2005:
During the warm-up a party mood prevailed at le Colisée, something that owed to the presence of the kids in for the tournament and to the appearance of the wunderkind, who was in fact only five years older than them But even before the opening face-off expectation was tempered with anxiety along press row. Effectively, no matter where you go, not even to a scene like this night at le Colisée, you can never take in the game of hockey without the intrusion of the business of hockey.
The NHL lock-out was wearing on and on most days there was little promise of a resolution. The cancellation of the 2004-05 NHL season was looming. So too was the cancellation of the 2005 NHL entry draft, otherwise known as Sidney Crosby’s draft. The possibility—some, like Gretzky, would have said the likelihood—of the NHL remaining shut down in the fall of 2005 was prompting speculation about Crosby’s plans. Would he be going to Europe if there wasn’t going to be a relaunch of the NHL in the fall? NHLers like Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards had made as much as $250,000 a month in the Russian league while Joe Thornton and Rick Nash made somewhat less but lived a lot better in Switzerland. There’d be money out there and a higher level of competition than he’d face in a third season of junior. Or would he be opting to play closer to home, say in the American Hockey League? There he would be facing the likes of Jason Spezza or even Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, the best of the class of young pros.
Pat Brisson wasn’t tipping his hand. He said that no decision had been made. He claimed that options might have been explored but none had been discussed with Crosby. "Sidney just wants to play the game," Brisson said by phone from Montreal. "All the business decisions to be made off the ice will be made by Sidney and his family, and they'll face those issues when it's time. He doesn't want to be distracted by all these other things."
Brisson did seem to rule out one option, namely a return to Rimouski: "Sidney is ready to move on to the next level. We just don't know where that might be right now."
Gilles Courteau, the commissioner of the QMJHL, begged to disagree. Courteau maintained that, in the event of an extended lock-out, Europe was not an option for Crosby, at least if the owners of the Rimouski Oceanic still wanted him. The commissioner said that it was a matter spelled out in the standard major-junior player contract—that a player had to be released from his junior obligations if a NHL wanted him but otherwise he was bound to major-junior club. "The only thing I can say is that he's under contract with Rimouski and the [QMJHL] for another three years [through to the end of 2006-07 season]," he said. "If there's no NHL I don't know what Sidney is going to do, but I know on our side that, according to his contract, he has to come back. When you sign a major junior contract at our level, you sign for four years."
Some agents were predicting that the dispute between l’Oceanic and leur Mick Jagger1 for next season was heading to court if the lock-out stretched past the summer. Said one agent: "It's likely that Crosby's side could argue that at age 18 he has a right to work ... to seek employment as he sees fit.” The agent suggested that Crosby could cite precedent on the case of John Tonelli, the player in the 1970s who successfully won the right to play professionally at 18. But the agent didn’t imagine that would put Crosby on a fast track to Europe or the AHL. “No matter which side wins if it goes to court, it’s almost a sure thing to be tied up there in appeal,” he suggested.
Other agents aren’t impressed. Said one: “Crosby has a contract with Rimouski and I don’t see an out. The team has its side deal with Crosby [a rumored $150,000 a season]. And that Crosby might be in Rimouski more than the two seasons going up to what should have been his draft year—well, that’s what they see as part of [the team’s] investment.”
There was reason to believe that Courteau was less worried about Crosby going to Europe than the precedent it might set. Officials had to worry that other CHL players might seek to follow Crosby to European pro leagues and wind up diluting major junior competition. And some agents don’t look forward to talking to junior clients who might want a taste of the European pros rather than another season of riding buses across the Canadian prairies for $60 to $100 in weekly pocket money.
When the game started, you had to wonder if a court order was about the only way to tie up Crosby. Even though Rimouski was in the throes of a wearying stretch of road contests and even though Crosby had been held pointless in a win over Gatineau a couple of nights before, it was clear that Crosby had taken his play to a new, higher level. He was stronger than he had been with the under-18s in the summer of 2003 or against Shawinigan in the playoffs ten months before. He had a comfort level playing with line-mates that he had grown to know over almost two full seasons. Sure, les Remparts were the toughest competition that Crosby and l’Oceanic were going to face. But Crosby was going about his business with a confidence bordering on impugnity.
On one of his first shifts in the first period, Crosby took a pass on the right wing outside the Quebec blueline—he had at that moment peeled out of the offensive end when a dump-and-chase had been broken up. Crosby was thus at almost a dead stand-still, a standing start with the puck. A Remparts defenceman had him one-on-one, position for a basic lock-up. But just from the defenceman’s posture, you could tell that there was nothing basic about his situation. Crosby burst out of the blocks with the puck out in front of him, tempting the blueliner to take it away from him. At the very moment that the blueliner reached for it, Crosby was by him and in alone on goaltender Maxime Joyal.
It seemed that Crosby did something like that almost every shift and he did pick up an assist on Rimouski’s opening goal by Pouliot, but Joyal was the story of the game. L’Oceanic dominated play, outshooting Quebec by almost a two-to-one margin, but the visitors needed a late goal by Francois Charette to beat les Remparts 2-1. Crosby was routinely mugged and drew five Quebec penalties. It wasn’t one of his memorable performances. In the last seconds he sent a long shot off the post of an empty net—maybe a fitting image.
It was during the third period that a buzz went down press row. RDS, the Quebec sports broadcast network, was carrying the game and its reporters had word that a settlement had been reached in the cold war between the NHL and the NHLPA. A number for the salary cap, $42-million or $45-million, was still to be determined, but, the print reporters were furiously trying to verify the rumour.
At the end of the game, they ran down from the press box to get Crosby’s reaction to the rumoured settlement and he said that he was “relieved” if it turned out to be true, that he’d look forward to the draft going ahead as scheduled and to getting a chance to go to a NHL training camp in the fall. At least in part, Crosby seemed relieved that, for a moment anyway, he wasn’t being asked about going to Europe or to the AHL or having to take on the Q and Rimouski in a court battle. When it was finally mentioned to him, he stuck to his talking point—“I really haven’t thought about it or talked about it,” he said once again.
“I’m not thinking about [the NHL] at all right now,” he said. “I’m honestly not. I’m concentrating on playing for this team and playing for a championship.” He said that he’ll sit down with his family and his agent “after the season, sometime during the summer, and look at the options.”
When asked if he’d go to the NHL as a replacement player, Crosby one-timed a denial. “That’s not one of the options we’ll talk about,” he said.
One reporter asked Crosby in French if he ever gets frustrated by the questions about his future. “Je sais que il sera comme ca,” he said. I know it’s going to be like that. And right now the only thing he can know for sure is that there will be more questions before he has any answers.
Thanks for reading.
Doris Labonte, the Oceanic coach, had been asked about his team’s star and referred to him as “notre Mick Jagger.” He’d be the only person in history who’d compare Crosby to the Stones singer … but when you think of it, neither can get satisfaction. So maybe something is there.