The Penguins wore a Scarlett Letter at their morning skate practice jerseys at BankAtlantic Center in Florida, but it wasn’t an “A.”
The team all came out wearing “C”s on their sweaters to show solidarity with captain Sidney Crosby, who skated for the first time after the team’s practice on his own (well except Evgeni Malkin, who went with the Russian version "K" on his chest).
The move was also in response to an article written by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which stated: “a group of players held a 45-minute meeting to discuss a temporary captaincy.”
So the Pens responded to the article by showing that they are standing behind Crosby as their captain in perpetuity.
“When someone says we don’t want Sid as our captain, it’s pretty ridiculous,” forward James Neal said. “He’s an unbelievable player, unbelievable leader. He’s going to be captain here for a lot of years. In the room there is no doubt that he is our leader and he is our guy. … It’s a pretty stupid comment.”
“It was just to have fun and loosen it up,” defenseman Brooks Orpik said. “(Crosby’s place on the team) has never been in question, not in this room. People can speculate. If we are on a six-game winning streak it probably doesn’t come up. We can only control what goes on in here.
“Sid will be our captain until he’s retired. I don’t know where that came from, but we had a little fun with it today.”
The players made a collective decision to wear the Cs. The Pens are hoping to snap out of a six-game losing streak and head coach Dan Bylsma saw this as a character-building move.
“The guys coming together and making a little joke of it, but also supporting their captain and coming together as a team, I liked what I saw,” Bylsma said.
Crosby was flattered by the support of his teammates, and thinks that this will bring the team closer as a group while going through adversity.
“That was a nice gesture, especially at a time like this when things are tough and there is adversity with the injuries and losses,” Crosby said. “We need to stick together. That was a good sign of sticking together. Whenever you have adversity there are times when your team and character is questioned. I don’t think that’s ever been a point with our group. It’s good to see everyone sticking together. I think we’ll see the results on the ice.”
Fair or not, Sidney Crosby’s unfortunate reputation as a whiner won’t be fading any time soon after his comments on Monday about this hit to his head by David Steckel of the Capitals during Saturday’s Winter Classic game…
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…which went unpenalized by the officials and unpunished by the NHL.
“How tall is Steckel?” Crosby asked, as quoted by Josh Yohe in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “I find it hard to believe that his shoulder hit me in the head…at 6-foot-5…by accident.”
“I didn’t even know that I hit him,” Steckel had said on Saturday (quoted by Katie Carrera of The Washington Post). “I was coming back with the 3-on-3 and when the puck went the other way I was facing one way and I came back and joined the rush. I didn’t even know it was him until I looked back. I haven’t even seen the hit yet, obviously it wasn’t intentional. I was just trying to get up to the play and he was there when I turned around I guess.”
Crosby’s teammates also rallied to his defense on Monday. “It was definitely dirty,” defenseman Brooks Orpik said. “Sid was just skating by and he definitely wasn’t near the puck.” But from the video on the CBC feed above, it certainly doesn’t seem like Steckel went out of his way to hit Crosby. He may or may not have rammed him intentionally, but Crosby was certainly in Steckel’s path as the play went the other way, and to CBC’s Craig Simpson, at least, it appeared to be incidental contact and not a hit in which the head was targeted.
What no one recalls is that about three-and-a-half minutes earlier, Crosby slashed the Caps’ Matt Hendricks in front of the penalty box and that was also unpenalized. NBC and Sports Illustrated’s Pierre McGuire had a perfect view of it from his rinkside position and reported it on the air (McGuire is a strong Crosby supporter), saying to play-by-play man Mike Emrick, “Crosby got away with a slash, Doc….The Washington bench is absolutely apoplectic,” which it was, with half of the players jumping up and waving their arms at the referees for the non-call. McGuire stated twice more that Crosby got away with the slash.
Everybody knows that these two teams don’t like each other, and rivalries help raise hockey’s passion level, making for greater game intensity. But that translates in the real world of the NHL into lots strong stuff going on all over the ice throughout a game. There are hits clean and dirty, stick work and retaliation. It can be a jungle out there. While we’re especially not a fan of hits to the head — and have stated so, repeatedly, for a while — we’re also not fond of hypocrisy.
As we’ve noted before, Crosby is hardly an innocent on the ice, and that’s fine. It doesn’t diminish his formidable abilities as a player. But if he’s going to whack guys, he’s going to get whacked right back. To complain about it is just plain disingenuous.
And while it’s clear that a lot of what teams tell the media is for local consumption and designed to rally fans behind the club, it’s also irritating when the media join that effort and lose objectivity. Yohe wrote in The Tribune Review today, “For a number of reasons, the hit didn’t receive much initial coverage. NBC only showed one replay of the hit and did not make a fuss over it.”
That’s just not true. NBC showed the hit at the conclusion of the period, followed Crosby during his achy, bent-over path off the ice, and then, after an on-ice interview with Alex Ovechkin, came back to show the grimacing Penguins captain. Emrick noted that Crosby had been staggered, but seemed okay. Then the hit was shown twice more before the start of the third period. McGuire commented that he had spoken with Crosby, who said he was fine, and with Penguins assistant coach Tony Granato about how Crosby was doing. That’s a pretty big fuss.
Sure, everyone wants to protect Crosby. He’s the Pens’ best player, and maybe the game’s best player, so it’s understandable. But as Gordie Howe said, “Hockey’s a man’s game,” and this Sid the Kid act only goes so far.
Michael Rosenberg | Sports Illustrated | May 13, 2013
The face of the NHL has a broken jaw. So when the Stanley Cup playoffs started last week, Sidney Crosby was far above the ice, in the press box at Pittsburgh's Consol Energy Center, watching his team dismantle the Islanders 5--0 in Game 1 of their first-round series. With 13:42 remaining, Crosby and his fellow inactive players headed to the elevator. He had already seen that his team did not need him. But his sport does.
Crosby made his playoff debut two days later, after getting clearance from his doctor. He is not the first celebrity to arrive at a gala fashionably late, though Hollywood stars generally show up with more teeth. But even before he arrived, he had arrived. He has elevated himself from one of the best players in the world to an all-time great.
And as Pittsburghers know too well, the 25-year-old Crosby is always worth the wait. He returned from a 13-game absence in Game 2 last Friday and scored twice in the first eight minutes of what turned out to be a 4-3 Penguins loss. Then, on Sunday, he assisted on three more Pittsburgh goals—including the game-winner and another on a beautiful backhand pass—in a come-from-behind 5-4 overtime win that put the Penguins (the No. 1 seed in the East and the favorites to win their fourth Stanley Cup) up 2-1 in the best-of-seven series.
Here is the most amazing thing about hockey's most amazing player: The more he sits out, the better he gets. From the start of 2009-10 until a January '11 concussion sidelined him, Crosby averaged 1.43 points and was +35 in 122 games. When he returned the next season, he averaged 1.68 points and was +15 in 22 games.
Then came the NHL lockout and another nine months off. In this season's exhaustingly packed, 48-game schedule, Crosby averaged 1.56 points, was +26 in 36 games and was widely acknowledged to be playing the best two-way hockey of his life. Then in a March 30 game against the Islanders, a shot that had ricocheted off a skate broke his jaw and knocked out several lower teeth. He was out of the lineup for almost a month before somebody finally passed him in the scoring race; he finished third with 56 points despite playing only 75% of the season.
If this is how you succeed in the workplace, we should all call in sick. But this wait was particularly scary. Crosby always maintained that he would return from his 2011 concussion, but agent Pat Brisson says now that "he had moments where he was questioning whether he was going to play again. After so long, he got nervous, especially when it wasn't getting any better at one point."
Following his concussion, Crosby says, "I couldn't do normal stuff that I probably took for granted: driving, going for a run, playing tennis—being active, really." Loud noises and bright lights (from watching television, for example) exacerbated the symptoms. Riding in the passenger seat of a car made him carsick.
Then, on March 30, he found himself headed to a hospital again. His father, Troy, rode with him, but there was not much for a dad to say, and Sid couldn't say anything—he had to be careful not to swallow blood.
Waiting for Sidney Crosby is not so much fun when you are Sidney Crosby. But the wait was worth it for him, too.
Playoff hockey is mesmerizing largely because of the constant anticipation. The loudest cheer of the first two games in Pittsburgh may have come when the 5'11", 200-pound Crosby skated out for warmups in Game 2. Thousands of additional fans gathered for the privilege of catching the games on a huge TV in the arena parking lot.
How does he do it? How does the best player in the world get better as he watches? To understand that, you must first understand Crosby's game in the context of other all-time greats'. He is not as creative as Wayne Gretzky, and he doesn't have the preposterous size-and-skill combination of Mario Lemieux, but he is more well-rounded than either. He often makes plays behind both goals in a single shift. His brilliance is built on relentlessness.
"How complete he is, that is what separates him," says teammate Matt Niskanen. "That and his drive. Lots of guys work hard, but he works harder. Lots of guys can skate fast, and lots of guys can stickhandle really well. He can do both at the same time and at a very high level."
Crosby has always been a hockey geek. Even as a kid who was far superior to his competition, he wanted to iron out any wrinkles in his game. Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero says that when he meets with Crosby, "I always set aside an hour, and every time—I don't think [a meeting has ever] been less than four hours. He just loves to talk about hockey."
Crosby says his absence only increased his passion: "I've always loved hockey, but I realized how much I really do love it." This would lead you to believe that he spends more time on the game than he did before. But that's not really the case. If anything, he has learned the value of thinking about it less.
"In the last couple of years, away from the rink, he has been trying to turn his brain off of hockey," says linemate Pascal Dupuis, Crosby's roommate on the road for three seasons.
Says Crosby, "When you're sitting around for a year and a half you realize you've got to enjoy the time you have—playing hockey, but also just being healthy. I learned to get my mind away from hockey a little more when I'm away from the rink."
He discovered he is better off concentrating intensely on hockey for part of the day rather than thinking about it all day. And by watching instead of playing, Crosby saw the game from a different angle. He studied the strengths and weaknesses of his teammates and the rest of the league. He saw openings that he hadn't seen on the ice. "When I came back, I realized there were things I was happy with and was able to maintain," Crosby says, "and there were other things I could improve."
That increased knowledge helped when he returned from his concussion last season. Then, during the lockout, he ramped up his workouts so that he would be at his physical peak when the puck finally dropped. Combined, those two things turned him into the most dominant NHL player in years.
Shortly after becoming the Penguins' G.M. in 2006, Shero decided to take his team on a training camp trip. He whittled his list of possible destinations down to two: West Point, N.Y., or Orlando. Eventually he picked West Point, and the Penguins spent six hours in Army-style training.
"We're in the middle of the jungle, basically, and there is an overturned jeep. And these eight guys per team have to figure out how to get it onto four wheels," Shero recalls. "It's teamwork: You do this, you do this, you do this.... Guys are getting under it, trying to figure it out. And I'm watching Sidney Crosby, at my first training camp, and I'm thinking, This f------ jeep is going to fall on his head, and I'm going to get fired. This is the stupidest thing we've ever done."
Afterward, the Penguins were so tired that they did the unthinkable: They turned down pizza and beer at their hotel to go to bed. The next day's practice would be canceled. But when Shero asked Crosby, "What do you think next year—West Point or Orlando?" Crosby replied, "We've got to come back here."
Warfare has fascinated Crosby since he visited Normandy on a teenage hockey trip and brought home a vial of sand. He is wary of parallels between the game and the military ("I don't think there is anything that compares to what they do"), but the focus of his interest offers a window into how his mind works. If he were a coach he might be intrigued by strategy, and if he were an enforcer he might be drawn to the brutality.
So what, specifically, interests Crosby?
"Snipers," Dupuis says.
Snipers, like scorers, are often misunderstood. People think it is all about the shot. But "marksmanship is a small part of it," says J.B. Spisso, a good friend of Crosby's who served in the U.S. Army Special Operations. Crosby reads books about snipers and asks Spisso about their preparation, discipline and perfectionism. "It's more than quick repetition," says Spisso. "It's precise repetition—very, very precise ability. It's not a run-and-gun scenario. It's very methodical. There is so much involved in shooting a bullet. [Sidney] understands that to be great at his game, he has to be involved in all facets of it."
The best snipers wait hours for their chance. And regardless of the stakes, that is Crosby. Outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he owns a vacation home on Grand Lake, there is a legend about enormous sturgeon that swim far beneath the water's surface. Crosby has spent hours using high-tech equipment to search for the fish, even though he laughingly admits that they may not exist.
For a while, it was an analogy that worked to describe Crosby: the big fish that we couldn't see, and didn't know if we ever would again, because of the concussion. But he is back now, exceeding his considerable hype.
Chuck Daly, coach of the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball Dream Team, loved to tell this story. The greatest players in the world showed up to practice for those Barcelona Games, but after a few days it was clear: Even among the best, Michael Jordan was on his own level.
That is Crosby now. Last year's league MVP, Penguins center Evgeni Malkin, is just 26. But there is no doubt that Crosby is better. Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin is still a sublime player, but the Crosby-Ovechkin debate has lost steam. For the moment, at least, Crosby has surpassed everybody.
Yet to many hockey fans—especially American ones—Crosby is unworthy of the throne once occupied by Gretzky and Lemieux. Crosby hears it in every road arena: He's an egomaniac, he whines, he dives, he's soft. Fans call him Cindy, and what the nickname lacks in creativity, it makes up for in misogyny. He was tabbed hockey's next great one (or Great One) as a child, and that has surely fed the narrative of Sid the Spoiled Kid.
But the truth is that he doesn't want anything until he has earned it. When Shero first asked Crosby to be the Penguins' captain, in early 2007, the 19-year-old turned it down. He didn't think he was ready.
"I always hear the same thing: Get a winger for Crosby, get a winger for Crosby," says the G.M. "He has never once asked me to get a player for him to play with."
In fact, at the trade deadline Shero made a deal with the Flames for six-time All-Star Jarome Iginla, 35, who assisted on Crosby's gold-medal-winning goal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. But when Shero talked to Crosby about the trade, Crosby said that he was happy playing on a line with Dupuis and Chris Kunitz, two undrafted players who had been having their best seasons. (It was Kunitz, in fact, who scored Sunday's game-winner, off an assist from Crosby.)
The key to playing with Crosby: skate fast and always be ready for the puck. He takes care of the rest.
Crosby was a lousy face-off man early in his career, but he worked on it and became one of the best. "He's got a lot of talent and he hones everything," says Niskanen. Which is what the Penguins mean when they say Crosby is a great leader: He shows what perfectionism looks like. If you want rah-rah speeches, rent a movie.
Crosby is playing at such a high level now that his game should have the same effect on critics that LeBron James's peaking game did the last two years, forcing them to applaud against their will. You can't boo when your jaw drops. Dupuis says Crosby feeds off the hate: "In Philly, as soon as the 'Crosby sucks!' chant starts going, I look to him on the bench, and I know he is going to have a great game." But Crosby does not fight it publicly.
"I don't think everyone likes Tiger Woods," his father says. "Not everyone likes LeBron. Just pick a sport—not everybody likes everybody. [Sidney] doesn't go to bed at night worrying about what the Flyers' fans think of him. He's had so much bad luck the last few years that I think he is just happy to be playing."
Pittsburgh has been disappointed lately by the behavior of other young stars—most famously, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, but also 33-year-old mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who took office at 26 and who recently dropped his re-election bid amid a federal investigation into police spending. (Last week Ravenstahl responded to an unfavorable story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with a rant in the newspaper's online comments section. The highlight: "It's actually laughable to think that you print your newspaper everyday [sic] with a straight face.")
Crosby, who signed a 12-year, team-friendly contract extension for $104.4 million last summer, just wants to go to work.
He moved in with team owner Mario Lemieux as an 18-year-old rookie (the two were teammates that first season), and though he said he was leaving almost three years ago, he still hasn't moved out.
Crosby is building a house near Lemieux's, and he will move when it's finished.
He doesn't buy a new sports car every year. (He drives a Range Rover in Pittsburgh and a Chevy Tahoe in Nova Scotia.) He spent much of last off-season in Santa Monica, Calif.—but he did it to get away from stardom. There he could eat lunch on a restaurant patio without being recognized.
"Sidney doesn't accept living in a bubble," says Brisson. "Some celebrities, that's what they're looking for, but that's not him."
Since he was a teenager, Crosby has balanced the responsibilities of promoting his sport with fitting in alongside teammates. In juniors he faced a dilemma: If he signed every autograph, the team would have to wait on the bus for him. Years later, when he returned to practice after breaking his jaw, he talked to the media every day, but never in a self-promotional way. This is why teammates don't mind all of the Sid questions. They love playing with him.
Crosby says that his next hockey frontier is shooting more often when he is far from the net. He has realized that he can get so consumed by the action on the ice that he loses sight of what is right in front of him.
"It's something that doesn't come quite as natural as making plays and looking to pass," he says. "I kind of have to force myself to work on my shot, to have that mentality to shoot the puck when I have a chance. It keeps guys guessing a little bit more."
For a much of the last three years, as he sat out with injuries, that is what Crosby did: kept everyone guessing. Now he is the surest thing in hockey.
Third in points, missing 25% of the season? If this is how you succeed at work, we should all call in sick.
Like they have with LeBron, critics may be forced to applaud Crosby against their will.
He cut me off before I could finish the question. If Sidney Crosby does come back this season, I started to ask Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, won’t it be hard to expect him to play at the level …
“Why is that?” Fleury responded, smiling.
Because, I started to say, he’s coming off a concussion and …
“But we’re talking about Sid,” Fleury interrupted again, still smiling. “The guy’s got a great work ethic, great talent. I’m sure as soon as he comes back, his presence is going to be felt on the team and other teams also.”
I wouldn’t put it past him. It would just add to his legend. It’s obvious why there has been so much excitement over every nugget of news, like when Crosby started skating on his own a couple of weeks ago and when he started participating in morning skates with his teammates Thursday, before their game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“Who wouldn’t want to have the best player in the game on your team in the playoffs?” Penguins winger Pascal Dupuis said. “So I surely hope he’ll be back at 100 percent.”
But if he comes back – and that’s far from certain – how can we be so sure Sidney Crosby will be Sidney Crosby? Can he play like the best player in the game again, just like that? For all his superpowers, Crosby has a Penguin on his chest, not an “S.”
Crosby had reached new heights right before he went down. He had 32 goals and 66 points in 41 games, on pace for the best statistical season of his career – which already includes goal- and point-scoring titles and an MVP award – and the best statistical season in the NHL since the early 1990s.
Now he hasn’t played since Jan. 5, when he took a hit to the head for the second straight game, and concussions are particularly complicated injuries. Even when players have experience dealing with concussions and come back strong during the season, it can be difficult.
This is Crosby’s first concussion. If he returns this season, it will be after missing the entire second half of the regular season and it will be in the playoffs, when the action is at the peak of intensity.
The Penguins have tried to temper expectations about the timing of Crosby’s return. General manager Ray Shero has made it clear that the Penguins will not rush him. If anything, they seem to be extra cautious, holding him back. Shero said Crosby will not return for any of the Penguins’ final five regular-season games and there might not be time for him to return in the playoffs.
That is wise. “Sid’s a smart guy, and he wants to play a long time,” said Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock, who coached Crosby when Team Canada won gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. “He’s young, and his team’s young. So be careful. We need him in the game.”
It’s trickier for the Penguins to temper expectations about how Crosby will perform if he does return. They can’t let him play unless they’re confident he’s 100 percent again. They shouldn’t sell short a player with his gifts, and they don’t want to take hope from him and his teammates, who have battled so hard and well without him – not to mention Evgeni Malkin and others – and are so confident in what he can do.
Asked if it is reasonable to expect that Crosby could come back and play like the best player in the game, Dupuis said flatly: “He will. The way I know him, the way everybody knows him on this team, you can expect that he will.”
Even coming off something like this?
“He will,” Dupuis repeated. “Just because he’s that kind of person. Talent doesn’t mean anything when you’re Sidney Crosby. It’s all about work ethic, all about dedication to the game. It’s all about wanting it, and he’s the kind of person that … I’m not worried at all.”
Sidney Crosby, skating regularly now after more than two months away from the rink, roofed a swift backhand under the crossbar, blasting a hole through the water bottle on the top of the net and sending a shower-spray of water into the air.
The crowd of trainers watching from the Penguins’ bench cheered and hollered, while Crosby just shrugged apologetically.
“I feel good,” a smiling Crosby told the Star after he stepped off the ice at the Consol Energy Center on Friday morning, his sixth on-ice workout since March 14.
The 23-year-old superstar hasn’t had many reasons to grin since getting knocked out of the league with a concussion on Jan. 5.
But at least on this day, after this skate, the smashed water bottle is a symbol of Crosby’s progress. Whenever a Penguins teammate or staff member came by to ask how Sid was doing, and many did, the trainers just pointed to the pieces of mangled green plastic.
Consider it a little bit of light in what has otherwise been a dark and lonely recovery.
“F---in’ right,” said Penguins forward Maxime Talbot, impressed with his captain. “It’s stronger than my forehand,” he joked with the trainers, before yelling at Crosby: “C’mon champ, you’re fine.”
The NHL, its fans and Crosby’s teammates, family and friends all hope Talbot is right.
While he hasn’t played in almost three months, Crosby remains the face of the game, his injured brain an emblem of the NHL’s current crisis, his uncertain future the league’s own as it wrestles with how best to deal with head shots and concussions.
And for more than two months, as he navigated his way through the complicated and delicate injury, there was so little information, so few signs of progress.
Even the spectre of early retirement was raised when Toronto sports radio host Bob McCown reported a family source had told him Crosby was being pressured to quit the game.
Crosby, his father and his agent have all since called the report baseless.
There is still no telling when Crosby might return to the Penguins lineup, but his progression from the indefinite darkness of the injury’s early days is giving hope to hockey fans that he may be back in time for at least some playoff action.
His regular on-ice workouts, increasing in duration from 15 to 30 minutes over the last week, suggest that at least the worst of the injury may be over.
The team released exclusive video footage of his return to the ice on March 14, as if he were a hostage they needed to prove was still alive and well.
At the time, Crosby said it was “impossible” to predict when he might return to the lineup and that he was “nowhere near” game shape.
But there was a little more certainty in his stride Friday morning as he took part in one of the longer and more vigorous sessions.
“He’s sweating, he’s working hard,” said Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma, who added he hasn’t watched any of Crosby’s on-ice sessions with conditioning coach Mike Kadar but knows the team’s doctors have “upped” Crosby’s activity levels as he continues to be symptom-free.
But the recovery is still very much day-to-day. And that’s not just an empty cliché. Crosby’s schedule is set each morning, only after doctors have reviewed how his body responded to the activities of the day before.
Crosby isn’t travelling with the team, but he’s often around when they’re at home.
“He’s like dog poop, he’s everywhere,” said forward Arron Asham, who has just returned from a concussion himself. “We see him around; he’s always got a smile on his face. He’s happy to be around and we’re happy to have him.”
“He’s the kind of guy that can’t stay away from the game or from his teammates,” said Pascal Dupuis, Crosby’s former roommate on the road. “He doesn’t know anything else but hockey. Hockey is his life. He breathes, he sleeps, he eats hockey — that’s who he is.
“Being away from the game, he’s probably discovering new things about himself that he didn’t know.”
Like what?
“He started knitting,” Dupuis said, tongue firmly in cheek.
“Without him telling you anything, it looks like he’s progressing really well,” said Brooks Orpik, who remains on injured reserve with a broken finger but is expected to rejoin the lineup before the playoffs.
Crosby was in the midst of what could have been the best season of his already storied career when he suffered hits to the head in back-to-back games on Jan. 1 and Jan. 5.
He was on pace for 132 points, which would have been a career high, and the highest single-season point total since Mario Lemieux scored 166 in 1995-96.
Despite missing 33 straight games, he remains the Penguins’ leading scorer and still sits in the top 20 league-wide, top 10 in goals.
Yet somehow the Penguins — who are also without their No. 2 centre, Evgeni Malkin — have continued to win, going 17-11-5 since Crosby’s absence. On Thursday, they inched a point closer to cross-state and division rival Philadelphia with a playoff-atmosphere shootout win over the Flyers.
Needless to say, the prospect of Crosby’s return — at any point in the playoffs — makes the Penguins a serious Cup contender.
Crosby hasn’t spoken publicly since that first skate, when he told reporters he has never considered hanging up the skates even for this season, let alone his career.
He said then that he was just trying to make small steps towards a full recovery.
He wouldn’t speak of any possible timeline.
Crosby was joined on the ice Friday by injured Mark Letestu, which seemed to amp up his competitiveness. Bylsma said Crosby told him before he went out on the ice that he was going to try to keep up with Letestu.
“I talked to Letestu afterwards and Mark said he tried to keep up with Sid.”
Crosby, his coaches and his teammates will tell you there’s still a long way to go towards a full recovery. Head injuries in particular are impossible to predict.
But there is at least a sense now, after seeing Crosby skate again, that the worst is over.
The Penguins are Fighting for Sidney Crosby’s Life
Sean Conboy | Pittsburgh Magazine | January 16, 2012
The Pittsburgh Penguins have won two hockey games in a row, which means that a small but perpetually CAPS-LOCKED segment of the media will allow some additional time for Sidney Crosby's brain to heal. For now.
Last week, after the Penguins dropped a hard-fought game to the Washington Capitals, the leader of this media sect’s shrill band (that band being Nickelback), radio personality/Real Live Internet Troll Mark Madden, took to Twitter and commenced his hardened routine of third grade shin-kicking.
Crosby has been a ghost since an errant and entirely accidental elbow from the Boston Bruins' David Krejci put the captain on the shelf with post-concussion symptoms in early December. The Penguins' six-game losing streak was a tipping point. Madden picked up on the palpable sense of unease and restlessness in the fanbase and set his sights on Crosby, a human person who is currently having trouble riding a stationary bike without feeling sick.
Unfortunately, in addition to being a human, Crosby is a professional hockey player who is paid nearly $9 million per season to perform feats of miracles that make us forget, for 120 minutes, about the backlog of horrible emails that await our attention. Madden knows how to build a proper fire. Money makes for great kindling.
"Sid's gotta decide whether the reward of playing for big money is worth the risk of going out there," Madden wrote to his 14,000 Twitter followers, a sentiment that he reiterated the next day on his radio program, where he rants when he's not DJing the life-soundtrack of Ed Hardy's target market. "Risk every player faces."
"When is a headache just a headache and not a symptom?" Madden wondered. "Don't doctors know better?"
There is an easy answer to that question, one which could be Googled in 10 seconds. A headache is a symptom when it's paired with sub-par scores on neurological tests, dizziness, double-vision, balance issues, slow reaction times, lethargy and a long list of other post-concussion hurdles. And yes, of course doctors know the difference. And yes, of course Crosby is exhibiting a combination of those symptoms, namely dizziness.
Madden went on to imply that Crosby may have been medically cleared by doctors, and that the majority of his teammates believe that he should be playing. Less than 24 hours later, general manager Ray Shero clarified that Crosby was not cleared to play, and the following day Crosby himself divulged he was cleared only for "light exertion" after his first public workout.
Called out by society’s more rational citizens in the aftermath of Wussygate, Madden took a page out of the Donald Trump public relations playbook. Like the Donald in the aftermath of the absurd Birther sideshow that gripped Ameriker, Madden maintained that he was merely "asking questions" and was proud that his misinformation campaign prompted the Penguins to break their silence about the injury.
In politics, sports and everything else, we’ve long lost the temerity to ask tough questions. Instead, we distract ourselves with firebrand bile. Madden can imagine that he’s playing Woodward and Bernstein, but in the end his bark merely pushed the Penguins to acknowledge what we’ve known all along: Crosby is not cleared. He is not scared. He is still suffering.
And of course he is. Of course there’s no conspiracy of silence. The truth is much less sexy and much more depressing: Crosby’s brain is starved for energy, and no amount of grit or money or courage is going to mend his neurons any faster.
It's almost too easy to vilify Madden and his Human Wet Willy persona. He's merely appealing to our own lesser angels. He's whispering—while shouting down callers—to a small part of our soul that we don't want to acknowledge at cocktail parties. Deep down, all of us want him to return too soon. We want him to light up our cold, bitter, horror-gray January weeknights.
But then there's this utter nonsense:
"What's being overlooked: The amount of hockey players who do come back from [a] concussion, accept risk, take precaution [and] play on," Madden tweeted.
This summer, when I chatted with Crosby’s physician, Micky Collins, he explained that athletes react to concussions in very different ways. Post-concussion syndrome can be more or less severe depending on a myriad of factors, including where the impact of a hit took place and how much the brain moved inside the skull, not to mention how fast the injury was identified. This is why it's so wrongheaded for the media to trot out the same tired comparisons of players' experiences with the injury, which vary wildly.
This is not an ACL tear. It's an injury to the most complex and unpredictable part of a human being—the motor that makes the entire body function.
There are four main ligaments in a human knee. There are billions of neurons in a human brain, more cells than there are stars in the sky. To imply that all players are on the same plane, and that most others have sacked up and played on with no serious long term consequences, is irresponsible.
Two-time All Star Marc Savard “accepted the risk,” returned to the ice after an on-and-off battle with concussions, and was forced to watch his Bruins win a Stanley Cup from his couch, where he will likely remain for the rest of his stolen career. In November, the 34-year-old showed the world a glimpse of the pain he continues to live with 11 months after suffering his last concussion when he tweeted, "Headaches are [a] normal part of life [now] but memory still the scariest thing … [Still] not able to workout.”
A day later, Savard tweeted, "Headaches galore."
"Bad headaches tonight," he tweeted in December. "I hate this crap."
Madden's point that Crosby should be more forthcoming with information might be valid. But his insinuation that head trauma can be overcome with a few Excedrin and a couple ounces of ol' fashioned gumption is downright dumbfounding.
Keith Primeau knew this kind of backlash was coming. The 14-year NHL veteran was forced to retire at age 34 after sustaining a series of concussions. Now, at age 39, Primeau has a hard time skating around while coaching his sons’ youth hockey teams without becoming dizzy. He has since co-founded stopconcussions.com, a website that aims to raise awareness about baseline neurological testing and concussion management.
“For me and my quest, seeing Sidney do the right thing is special,” Primeau told The Tribune-Review. “The culture we’re brought up in with the hockey world just tells us to play through injuries. That may seem like courage, but it really isn’t .… People are looking up to his courage as we speak."
When Crosby came into the league at age 18, the Penguins were playing in front of thousands of empty orange seats and were half-way out the door to Kansas City. Seven years later, the waiting list for season tickets at the brand-new CONSOL Energy Center stands at over 4,200. Crosby has made the franchise millions upon millions of dollars more than his comparatively paltry $43 million contract. And yet Madden's insinuation, which is really just a reflection of our own hidden desires, is that Crosby owes the franchise and its fans something more.
We all have to ask ourselves how we want to be remembered. Not just today, when the microphones are hot, but when it's all over. Mark Madden has to ask himself this question when he’s all alone with his real self—not his WWF heel shtick. Crosby has to ask himself the same, when all the reporters are gone and it's just him and his bedroom ceiling.
How does Sidney Crosby the Man want to be remembered? Hockey moms are watching. Youth hockey players are watching. The pressure mounts with each passing day. The next hit, whenever it comes, might change Crosby's life forever, and with it, the game of hockey. Whether or not we want to admit it, there is so much more at stake than the 2012 NHL season. The ultimate irony is that it’s Crosby’s teammates—that ragtag M*A*S*H unit of the walking wounded and wide-eyed minor league replacements—who can do the most for their captain. Win, and the world is compassionate. Lose, and it grows restless.
Every night, Crosby probably stares at the ceiling of his bedroom and feels like it's closing in on him. Primeau knows the fear well. Despite all that he advocates, not to mention the pain he knows could be coming in five, 10, 20 years—the darkness that came to swallow up Derek Boogaard and Wade Belak and Bob Probert—Primeau admitted that he would have a hard time doing anything differently if given the chance to relive his career.
"That's the sad part for me, and that's why I know we're so far away," he said. "Because I don't think I would have changed much."
Those who are impatient or just plain indifferent enough to believe that Crosby should rush a return for the sake of a sports franchise, or a league, or worst of all, for their own entertainment, are truly the ones who are sick in the head.
Sidney Crosby Could Have Died: The Real Problem in the NHL Concussion Debate
Bobby Brooks | Bleacher Report | March 3, 2011
Concussions, concussions, concussions. By now, this term has been burned into your consciousness, and there is a very good reason for it.
The NHL is getting bigger, stronger and faster. Last season, there were approximately 55,000 documented hits during the season. That was a 40 percent increase since 2003. So far this season, the total number of official concussions has reached 70.
If you Google "NHL concussions", you will find numerous articles and debates about the topic. You will come across Elliotte Friedman's feature on CBC, a press release from the NHL and an ESPN panel discussion, among others.
In them, you will find a lot of useful and insightful information. Some recommend changes to the equipment and glass, while others suggest rule changes. However, what you likely won't find is any discussion about second-impact syndrome (SIS).
The severity of Sidney Crosby's current concussion is probably due to SIS. It is defined as "the result when an athlete who has suffered a concussion returns to activity too soon and receives another blow to the head that can result in much greater trauma to the brain than that initially experienced."
In other words, he could have died due to brain swelling. No two people react the same after a first or second concussion, which makes it all the more scary.
The most disastrous risks associated with concussions aren't the long-range effects like what Bob Probert had in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), but it is the risk of a second impact too soon after the first.
In sports, we see it all the time. Two seasons ago in the NFL, running back Brian Westbrook suffered a concussion in which he was knocked out cold on Monday Night Football. He was barely out a couple of weeks before he returned. In his first game back, he received another blow to the head, but this time, it was much more minor.
What was the effect on his brain? A much more significant head injury because it compounded the original one. He was put on injured reserve for the remainder of the season.
The same thing happened to Sidney Crosby, Marc Savard and many others.
The real problems with this whole debate are the horrible screening standards, a medieval, hyper-masculine player culture and lack of appropriate post-concussion care.
Take a look at the absurdity coming out of Leafs GM Brian Burke's mouth.
"I think the league has been a leader on the concussions. I think other leagues are looking to us on how we diagnosis and treat concussions. I think we're a leader on it. It's a serious issue in our game. It's always going to be an issue in our game."
What planet is he living on? Anyone with half a brain could tell that Crosby's original hit in the Winter Classic left him feeling "not right". Keep in mind this is the same GM that saw his team allow Mikhail Grabovski to return to the ice after a clear-cut head injury vs. Boston.
As it stands now, there aren't standardized test procedures to diagnose concussions, and this is what needs to change as soon as possible.
In the NFL, if a player gets a head injury, he is immediately pulled out of the game so he can be re-evaluated over the coming days. An NFL player must be symptom-free for a minimum of five full days before he can be cleared to play. These are the very bare basics and conditions that the NHL does not currently have.
Gary Bettman has gone on record to say that "accidental hits" are to blame for the increased concussion rates.
Who exactly are these people? If these are the leaders of the issue in the game today, then I fear for the players' safety.
There is no way on earth that Crosby should have been allowed to return to the ice in the Winter Classic, and now he is probably out for the year because of it. Going forward, another significant blow to the head could end his career.
When will the league wake up and realize that its current standards are archaic?
Personally, I find it pathetic that the Pittsburgh Penguins haven't come under much greater scrutiny and criticism for the way they handled the league's prized possession. Too many players are being allowed back onto the ice too soon.
Common sense dictates that a whole host of changes can be made, and God only knows what they are waiting for.
Let's just hope that it happens before it's too late.
