Excerpts from The Rookie (Shawna Richer) about Crosby living with Lemieux for his first year (trancription under the cut)
UNDER A PENGUIN'S WING
I've been waiting a long time for this
ONE OF THE MOST compelling storylines to emerge immediatly after the draft lottery and hold interest through the first few months of the season was the relationship between Sidney Crosby and Mario Lemieux.
They had been introduced the previous summer by Crosby's agent, Pat Brisson, and had skated together and gotten to know each other.
More than two decades earlier, Lemieux held the Quebec Major Junior League scoring records that Crosby finished just shy of. Lemieux was such a highly coveted top draft pick that Eddie Johnston, then the Penguins' general manager, traded the team's top defencemen and sent their goaltender to the minors so as not to finish out of last place in the 1983-1984 season standings.
When the Penguins won the right to draft Crosby, it was eerily similar to what had happened two decades ago. In his final year of junior with Laval, Lemieux scored 133 goals and had 149 assists to break Guy Lafleur's long-standing record for goals and Pierre Larouche's for total points. Crosby led the league in both his seasons to earn its top honours. But the eras in which they arrived could not have been more different. For one thing, Lemieux's draft selection wasn't broadcast on television. For another, Crosby proudly pulled on his Penguins sweater before the cameras. Even if he had wanted more money in the way Lemieux did, under the new collective bargaming agreement it wasn't possible for a rookie to earn more than $850,000 in salary.
On the afternoon of the draft lottery, Lemieux was at the doctor's office in Pittsburgh with his daughter when he learned the Penguins would select first. He immediatly called Brisson, who was at the Crosby's house, watching it on television. Brisson handed his cellphone to Sidney, and Mario offered congratulations and told him that Pittsburgh would be happiy taking him first overral with their pick. Crosby assured Lemieux he would be delighted to become a Pittsburgh Penguin.
Later, it was Brisson who gently broached the subject of Crosby living with Lemieux, suggesting that perhaps it would be nice if the kid could live with the family while he adjusted to life in the NHL. Mario had stayed with a local family when he arrived in Pittsburgh, and the living arrangements smoothed his first season. "Mario liked Sidney as a person," Brisson said. "When they met, they immediatly hit it off. Sidney was laughing and telling stories and felt very comfortable around Mario, so it was a good fit for both."
Lemieux liked the idea. His wife, Nathalie, and four kids, Lauren, twelve, Stephanie, ten, Austin, nine, and Alexa, eight, were excited to have another youngster, not all that much older than them, join the family.
The day Crosby arrived at the house in Sewickley, a stately suburb about a half-hour drive outside of the city, Austin and Stephanie, who both played organized hockey, had a game of ball hockey going on in the driveway while they waited for him. They saw him as a new playmate, an addition to the brood rather than a house guest. Crosby laughed when he saw the game and joined in immediatly.
"Sidney liked that a lot," Lemieux said. "It made him feel more comfortable. He's adjusted very well. He plays with the kids a lot, and he's very chatty. He talks all the time. The kids love him. We talk a lot, have dinner together every night."
During training camp they would get up early, around 6:30 a.m., work out and skate, and then return home to relax. "We do our own thing until the kids get home from school and start bothering him," Lemieux said. Often Crosby would head out into the backyard "to goof around" or play video games and sing karaoke with them. The kids were always trying to wrestle with him. But Crosby loved it. "I like a busy house," he said. It also gave his life, which could feel surreal and hectic with so much travel and so many commitments, a normal sensibility.
Early in the season Lemieux joked, "We have no rules," and said Sidney was allowed to have girls visit but not overnight. When Sidney was asked about it later, his cheeks turned red and he quipped, "No comment."
Their relationship, despite the twenty-two-year age difference, was more buddy-buddy than father-son. The living situation was seen as a real boon for Crosby as he got used to the NHL.
"I think just being around him is going to help me," he said. "I can ask him little questions, even about things in town, where things are, and he's just going to make me feel comfortable right away and familiarize me with what's here. That's the main thing, being around him and seeing how he goes about things in his day."
"He got lucky," Brad Richards observed. "He's with one of the best to ever play the game. To have that to learn from is amazing. Mario will protect him. He's got people watching him every shift, every step. It's tough on a thirty-year-old man, never mind an eighteen yar-old kid."
Ryan Malone was a native Pittsburgher who was the Penguins' best rookie the previous season. His father, Greg Malone, had played for the club and was now a scout. Even though he had grown up around the Penguins, he knew it could be jarring to look up in the dressing room and see one of your teammates and one of the greatest players of all time.
"When you're lining up alongside Mario Lemieux, and you've looked up to him your whole life, that's intimidating," Malone said."But you eventually realize that you're on the team, and in that regard you're all the same. It doesn't matter how old or young you are."
Still, seeing Lemieux at the breakfast table had to be odd, at least at first, but Crosby seemed to settle in quickly. They drove to practice and games togehter until Crosby bought his own car a few months into the season. Lemieux tried to balance being a steadying influence with giving the kid his space, and Crosby was naturally drawn to his younger teammates, guys such as young forwards Malone, Maxime Talbot, and Matt Murley.
In the end, the experiment had gone well enough that Crosby would decide to stay on at the Lemieux house for at least another season. The kids had been pestering him to stay, and he let them know he would return in late August.
"They were just great for me," he said. "The whole atmosphere, the environment was perfect. I'm away from things a little bit there. I don't have to worry about cooking or cleaning. When you have so much going on, it's nice to come home and not have to worry about stuff like that." He paused and chuckled. "I'm trying to get as many years as I can in with that."
He felt it was a good, stabilizing influence to be there.
"It's like a second family for me now, though sometimes it's tough to think of it that way. I mean, it's Mario Lemieux, a guy I grew up watching, but they've treated me really good and it's like relatives. It's like I'm just staying there. My sister gets along with the kids, and they always ask about each other. It's a great environment and it couldn't have worked out better."
Lemieux's wife, his teenage sweethheart, Nathalie, took care of Crosby and treated him like a fifth child. She cooked him special meals and repeated them if he had played well after eating something specific.
"One night she made a certain spaghetti sauce, and I had it and had a four-point game. Then we played the next night and she had run out, so when I got home all this stuff was laid out on the counter and she was trying to make it from scratch. All the kids were helping. I was like, 'Oh my God.' I was blown away that she'd actually do this for me, go to that lenght to make sure I was comfortable and happy. I'm spoiled there in a way, but I really appreciate it."
On October 11, 1984, Mario Lemieux scored on the first shot of his first shift on the first night of his NHL career. He finished the season with 100 points - fourty-three goals and fifty-seven assists in seventy-three games. Olczyk was drafted the same year, as was Crosby's father, Troy, who was a goaltender with the Verdun Junior Canadiens of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
While playing with the Laval, Lemieux once beat Troy Crosby with a slapshot from centre ice. Eddie Olczyk, who was the number three pick that same year - he went to the Chicago Blackhawks - knew how long a shadow his captain cast.
"I was intimidated when I first came into the room," Olczyk said of his first days as the Penguins coach the previous season. "It's hard not to be intimidated by a player like him. But what better a player to learn from, because he lived it. When Mario came here in 1984, he was the guy. But now we have six or seven other players who will share the limelight."
When Lemieux arrived in Pittsburgh, he barely spoke a word of English. But Crosby spoke better than just decent French. He had learned over two seasons in Rimouski and continued to practise it in Pittsburgh when he had the chance. Lemieux acknowledged that he wasn't nearly as mature at the same age. He didn't have the same training habits, smoked, and loved junk food. But he had much to share from seventeen seasons.
"He's always asking questions. I'm here to give him some confidence and encouragement and look out for him, make sure he's holding up with everything that's going on. It's going to be a lot easier for him to start his career."
Crosby had already formed a plan for how he would approach the season and what he wanted to accomplish other than winning. "I just want to be a good role model, an honest worker on the ice, and a good person off it. You can't be putting in time."
He figured Lemieux would be a big part of refining that character at the NHL level. "It's a matter of getting good habits," Crosby said. "A lot of guys start out and don't have someone to point them in the right direction. I feel fortunate to have that."
Lemieux felt just as fortunate to have Sidney in his life as a player and adopted son. He was committed to keeping the Penguins in Pittsburgh and was willing to lose roughly seven million dollars a season for the next few years if a new building was on the horizon. In the early weeks of training camp, Lemieux was in the best mood many remembered ever seeing him in. "I can't remember when I have seen him so excited and smiling so much," Craig Patrick noted.
Given everything Crosby had already accomplished, one of the most remarkable things was making Lemieux, who would turn fourty years old on opening night, October 5, feel like a young man again. For his part, Lemieux hoped to turn that spark into twenty to twenty-five minutes a night on the ice.
"It's difficult to play when the building is half full, but Sidney is allowing us to start turning things around," Lemieux said. "Drafting him allowed us to put a good team on the ice this year."
The day before Crosby signed his contract, Lemieux inked a one-year deal worth three million dollars, a 43 percent pay cut from his 2003-2004 earning of $5,25 million. He had been playing professional hockey almost as long as his young protegé had been on the earth. Lately, it was rare to see him without a grin on his slim face. He even felt upbeat about seeing an arena built. "Optimistically," he said, "we'll be here forever."
In a pre-season game against Columbus, Lemieux had shown signs of his old self. He scored once and set up three other goals in the meaningless 7-2 win. He was having a terrific training camp. It took him about a week to get comfortable; after that, he didn't look nearly his age.
"I felt better," Lemieux said after his four-point night. "The first couple of games, I didn't feel good at all, especially handling the puck and making plays. But tonight I felt good on my skates, making good plays and seeing the ice. When I'm able to see the ice ahead of time when I get the puck, I'm able to make some pretty good plays."
was going to have to spend 540 BRL on a book to buy it from the usa but instead got to borrow it from the internet archive so i'm donating that amount to them instead 🙂👍 yay
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