Sid takes the Cup back home again

HALIFAX — Hockey superstar Sidney Crosby will mark his 30th birthday by once again parading the Stanley Cup in his home province of Nova Scotia.

In tweets sent out by the Sidney Crosby Hockey School in Cole Harbour, N.S., residents were told Crosby would be hoisting the trophy in the streets of Halifax and Dartmouth as part of an annual civic parade.

“Get ready, the Stanley Cup is coming to town!” Crosby confirmed in the tweet sent late Tuesday night. “I will be taking Lord Stanley to the streets Monday August 7th in the HalifaxDartmouth Natal Day parade.”

The parade, part of annual events that celebrate Halifax’s birthday, also happens to fall on the Pittsburgh Penguins captain’s 30th birthday — Aug. 7.

Natal Day chair Greg Hayward said he expects another 25,000 people will be lining the parade route on top of the roughly 40,000 usual attendees.

“It’s extremely exciting to think that we’re going to have Sid and the Cup in our Natal Day parade,” Hayward said.

Hayward said Crosby’s people had approached him roughly 10 days ago about his possible inclusion in the parade, but it wasn’t confirmed until he saw the tweet Tuesday night.

“They had some certain requirements as far as Sidney and the Cup’s safety go and they talked to me about that, and we must have given them all the right answers, because they came out last night and said, ‘We’re in’,” said Hayward.

The four-kilometre parade starts at 10 a.m. on Gottingen Street in Halifax’s north end and will travel across the Macdonald Bridge before ending up near Sullivan’s Pond in Dartmouth.

Crosby has shown off professional hockey’s most prestigious trophy twice before in his hometown of Cole Harbour, just outside Dartmouth, in 2009 and ’16.

Last July, Crosby carried the Cup in the back of a pickup that made its way to an arena in Cole Harbour as thousands of cheering fans looked on in sweltering heat.

Each player of the Cup-winning National Hockey League team gets brief custody of the trophy.