ALL GROWN UP
Sid the Kid turns 30, having lived up to the promise of his youth,
HALIFAX— As he turns 30 on Monday, Sidney Crosby will celebrate his third Stanley Cup win parading the cherished mug through the streets of the city where he’s been a star since he was five years old.
After 12 years in the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins captain’s place is already assured in the pantheon of the game’s greats. He has fulfilled the promise that many saw in him from almost the first time he laced up a pair of skates.
In the tradition of Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux and now Connor McDavid, Sid the Kid was a hockey prodigy.
“He was not only the best player I ever saw, but significantly the best player,” said Brian Newton, a retired lawyer who coached a seven-yearold Crosby as a high-scoring centre on Cole Harbour’s Novice AAA Wings.
Newton recalled his first brush with a five-year-old Crosby. It came after getting a phone call from Sidney’s father Troy.
Newton said the hockey season was about a month old when Troy Crosby asked that his son, who was playing Timbits hockey at the time, be moved up to play with the six-yearold group.
Knowing how some parents can be, Newton said he agreed to see wheth- er the move should be made, but he asked Troy not to describe his son.
“I said, ‘Well no, if he’s this good a player, I’ll be able to pick him out.’ ”
Newton went to a Cole Harbour rink one Saturday morning and hid himself from the parents, watching the young Crosby control the puck as a gaggle of tiny players frantically tried to get it away from him.
“He just stuck out like a sore thumb,” Newton said. “It was just amazing — I’d never seen anyone with that skill level at five years of age.”
Crosby was moved up with the sixyear-olds and the next year he started playing rep, a level reserved for the best players in each age group.
Newton said at six and seven years of age, Crosby’s physical skills were clearly recognizable — as were other traits that often separate the great ones.
“He not only had the physical skills, but when I looked at him he had that inner quality, that desire, that drive,” Newton said. “And that followed Sidney right through minor hockey.”
There was also a “quiet confidence” Newton noted, that enabled him to possess the puck in the face of players who were often one to two years older than he was.
A trace of the trait was evident in one of Crosby’s very first media interviews.
“They say you have to do your best and work hard and things will happen,” he told the Halifax Daily News in a feature written in April 1995 when Crosby was seven.
“Fame and fortune, I don’t think, have really changed him very much at all.” BRIAN NEWTON FORMER CROSBY COACH
“You can make it if you try.” Crosby’s minor hockey dominance continued into peewee, where he announced his arrival on a much bigger stage, the Quebec International Peewee Tournament.
His coach then, family friend Paul Mason, said going into the tournament the media hype surrounded a local boy as the next “must-see” player.
That all changed after Crosby scored six goals and four assists for Cole Harbour in his first tournament game.
“We compared him against the best in the world and he was the best,” Mason said. “You knew at that point that you had someone here that was pretty special.
“Sometimes (the coaches) would just sit back and go, ‘Oh my God,’ and just look at each other — did he really do that? There were several times that you did that during the year — he was that good.”
Former CBC sports broadcaster Bruce Rainnie first heard the buzz about a young Crosby in 1995 and after initial skepticism, finally decided to check him out at the urging of legendary Halifax sports writer Pat Connolly.
Rainnie said an undersized Crosby recorded nine goals and two assists in a 13-9 Cole Harbour win.
“I thought if he develops into any sort of average to larger-sized athlete, this is going to be an NHL legend,” Rainnie said. “And it was obvious from, honestly, the age of eight.”
Crosby’s dominance in Nova Scotia lasted until the age of 14 when he left home to play at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a prep school in Minnesota. From there it was on to Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and finally the NHL, where his numbers confirm his status as a future Hall of Famer: 382 goals, 645 assists in 12 seasons, three Stanley Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two Hart trophies as the NHL’s most valuable player
Through it all he has remained very much the hometown boy. It’s something that has endeared him to his fans and to those with a personal connection.
“Fame and fortune, I don’t think, have really changed him very much at all,” Newton said. “Everybody in Cole Harbour, they respect him so much because he always comes home, he’s always down to earth, he’s running his hockey school here and he’s still part of our community.”
Halifax’s mayor recently announced that Crosby would be parade marshal of Monday’s annual Natal Day parade, with thousands expected to cheer a favourite son.
“I know he’s richer and I know he’s more famous,” Rainnie said, “but his fundamental groundings have never changed.”