Who said it first, whether it’s been massaged from its original form and who might have shaped it along the way are all a mystery to me. All I know is, the first time I heard somebody say Sidney Crosby was the best fourth-liner in hockey, I thought Yogi Berra himself couldn’t have phrased it better.
The Mount Rushmore NHLer with the motor of a Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker will play his 1,000th career game on Saturday when the Penguins host the New York Islanders. Given his unwavering focus, Crosby will surely do more stick-taping than rose-smelling leading up to his milestone contest. Fans should take this opportunity to zoom out, though, and celebrate his achievements. After all, there were times when it felt like we might be robbed of the opportunity to fully fete this player and person for everything he is.
Crosby, of course, is not alone in terms of living a type of “Chosen One” existence while also appearing cursed at times. Bobby Orr’s knees are mentioned as often as his goals. Mario Lemieux, Crosby’s old landlord and teammate in the latter’s earliest days as a Penguin, confronted cancer in his mid-30s.
Still, you look at the major gaps in Crosby’s games played column, contemplate how a 33-year-old who skated in his first NHL contest two months after his 18th birthday could have hit this 1,000-game benchmark years ago and think, thank goodness this artist was blessed with the soul of a grinder because so much of Crosby’s NHL time has been, well, a serious grind.
The most unsettling moment for a lot of us came early in December of 2011. Just a few weeks prior, Crosby had returned from a 320-day concussion-induced absence. He scored 5:24 into his return against the Islanders and finished the game 2-2-4. Seven outings later, he was going back on the shelf. Post-concussion syndrome still had him in its horrible grasp. All that time on the sidelines and Sid was gone again, just like that, with no sense for when — and at that point, it felt you had to use the word if — we’d see him again. Crosby didn’t return to game action for three-and-a-half months.
When I think of that time away, I wonder how galling it was for him to be dealing with an ailment where being sedentary is a big part of the recovery. I wouldn’t wish Connor McDavid’s 2019 season-closing knee injury on anyone, but in a twisted way, the prescription of pushing just a little more each day — even if it’s just toe wiggles — plays into the maniacal nature McDavid and Crosby possess. Doing nothing must have been hell.
Even before the concussion fallout stemming from that infamous David Steckel hit during an outdoor battle between Washington and Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day, 2011, Crosby faced difficult — albeit lower stakes — challenges. He’s the last superstar to endure a contest where opponents could basically gang tackle him without intervention from the referees because he played the 2005 Memorial Cup final under a Dead Puck Era ethos.
Soon after, the NHL would return from a lost season with new rules that opened up the game, an approach that trickled down to all levels. In May of ’05, though, Crosby was wearing, like, three London Knights every time he touched the puck in a championship game Corey Perry and the Knights won on home ice versus Crosby’s Rimouski Oceanic.
During Crosby’s first trip to the NHL post-season in 2007, he played a five-game loss to the Ottawa Senators on a broken foot. In 2009, when his Penguins got over a hump in the shape of Nick Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, Crosby was crunched early in the second period of Game 7 by Red Wing Johan Franzen and played just a single third-period shift in the contest that ended with Marc-Andre Fleury diving across the crease to preserve a 2-1 Cup-clinching win. He was relegated to being the most invested of observers rather than a participant in the crunch-time minutes of his own coming out party.
But nothing was going to stop this guy. And, thankfully, there were also times when the stars aligned to afford him big-stage moments that almost felt scripted.
Who else was going to slide that golden goal past Ryan Miller in 2010 on home soil to close the Vancouver Olympics? Even if he had a pedestrian tournament by Crosby standards, the instant that puck went in every Canadian thought, “Had to be Sid!”
Crosby’s first Canadian NHL opponent came in the form of the team he grew up rooting for, the Montreal Canadiens. The game, broadcast nationally from Cole Harbour to Vancouver, resulted in the first shootout in Habs history and Crosby won it by scoring the only goal in the skills competition when he streaked in on Jose Theodore, lifted his right leg, juked to his backhand and popped the water bottle skyward. Roughly two years later, the heavens opened up during the NHL’s first Winter Classic so Crosby could deposit another shootout-deciding tally as big, fat Buffalo snowflakes made the event seem like a painting.
Had to be Sid.
His Hall of Fame resume came together so quickly — Crosby had his Cup, league MVP trophy and Olympic gold medal by age 23 — it’s easy to forget how fast he and the Penguins wandered into a rudderless second act. Winning the 2013 Ted Lindsay Award was Crosby’s unofficial “I’m back” moment from the concussion complications. (Of course, he still had to endure an awful broken jaw during that lockout-shortened season after catching a deflected puck from teammate Brooks Orpik flush in the face).
The joy of having Crosby back and healthy again kind of overshadowed the fact the Penguins weren’t doing much of anything in the playoffs. By 2015, a team that once appeared destined to be an all-time outfit was completely spinning its wheels, having failed to advance past the second round all but one time in its six trips to the playoffs following the 2009 title.
The two Cups that followed in ’16 and ’17 — complete with back-to-back playoff MVPs for Crosby, ticking his last accomplishment box after Evgeni Malkin won the Conn Smythe in ’09 — cemented Crosby’s legacy forever. Even Mario — the literal savior of Penguins hockey — only won two championships. And as we hover on this moment to recognize all that Crosby has done, it’s impossible not to peek ahead and wonder what’s to come for him and a Penguins organization that almost feels like it’s back where it was six years ago.
When Brian Burke and Ron Hextall were recently hired to run the team’s hockey operations, the sentiment of the incomers was something along the lines of going for it this year and — based on what they see — charting a path forward in the summer. What will Burke and Hextall make of this squad if it fails to win a post-season series for a third consecutive year? Could a page-turning in Pittsburgh really include a Crosby trade? We don’t often get a window into Sid’s mind because he’s done a masterful job of keeping us out of that precious space. On Friday, he told NHL.com he wanted to spend the rest of his career in Black and Gold and there’s certainly no reason not to take the man at his word.
On the flipside, you see the competitive spirit, the devotion to craft and immediately think of Tom Brady — who spent two decades racking up titles with the New England Patriots — recently winning a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay at age 43. Who knows, maybe that could still be Crosby’s route; being in a situation where he can compete for rings every single year — even if it requires a move — until he hangs ‘em up a two-term presidency down the road. Perhaps he’ll play long enough to literally be the best fourth-liner in the world. Actually, who’s kidding who; best third-liner, at worst.
Given all he’s been through, no player is more deserving of making his future precisely what he wants it to be than Crosby. Forgive the rest of us, though, if we hope he sticks around and tries to make up for lost time.
