Swatting puck out of midair not uncommon or easy

Like he does with so many things, Sidney Crosby makes it look easy.

There was the time he shot the puck off the post and swatted the rebound into the net out of midair. Or, the time he waited for the puck to drop and backhanded it in for a goal. Or, when knocked the puck up to himself with his stick before tapping it in.

“I think it’s just instincts,” Crosby said.

It’s actually a mix of natural talent, instincts, awareness, timing, patience and handeye co-ordination. Crosby’s Pittsburgh teammates are still amazed every time he does it and they should be.

“It’s just a reactionary thing,” Penguins winger Conor Sheary said. “When you see the puck go in the air, you just try to bat it. He’s better at it than a lot of other guys, and I don’t know what that is.”

Batting a fluttering piece of frozen rubber 3 inches in diameter and 1-inch thick with a stick blade 2 to 3 inches wide is no simple task. Doing it at full speed in an NHL playoff game certainly raises the degree of difficulty. Yet a handful of goals have been scored or saved already this post-season with a player somehow able to connecting their stick with an airborne puck at the perfect time.

As recently as Tuesday night, Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin batted the puck out of the air off the post in Crosby-esque fashion for the game-winner to beat the Penguins.

“I hit the post and it’s a good thing I didn’t raise my arms up,” Ovechkin said. “I finished up the play and got lucky.”

Teams don’t have drills for this kind of thing, but hockey players are always noodling with the puck, so the familiarity with both stick and puck becomes ingrained at an early age. Playing baseball and other sports growing up can’t hurt. Washington Capitals forward Brett Connolly, who scored a baseball-style goal with Boston in 2015, thinks players learn the skill and try to use it when they can. “Your athleticism kind of takes over at that point,” Connolly said. “Once your handeye is at a high level, you kind of track the puck. I think as hockey players we’re always looking around, we’re so quick, our eyes are all over the place and we’re staring at the puck. You kind of just take a chance at it and sometimes it works out.”

It worked out for Toronto’s Connor Brown on his goal in Game 5 of the first round when the puck bounced off a defenceman’s stick and he knocked it in before goaltender Tuukka Rask knew where it was. Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t know where the puck was when captain Nick Foligno whacked it out of the air to prevent a goal during the first round against Washington, either, a product of years of work.

To the surprise of no one, Crosby’s career is full of similar highlights.He once slugged a home run during batting practice at PNC Park some years ago.