Crosby pined for a career as goaltender

Father Troy thought his son would be bored and talked him out of it

Had Troy Crosby given in to his boy, oh, how hockey history would’ve changed.

Early on in his youth hockey days in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, Sidney Crosby so badly wanted to strap on the pads and stop some shots like his father.

Or perhaps like Patrick Roy, another goalie picked by the Canadiens in 1984.

Or, heck, anybody who got to wear a cool mask and all that crazy gear.

But Troy would not budge. It wasn’t that he imagined the little squirt would one day become a center bound for the Hall of Fame. He just thought Sid would get bored.

“As a younger kid, you kind of just stand there,” Crosby said last week. “He thought it would be more enjoyable for me to just go out there and skate around and chase the puck. He tried to talk me out of it a lot of times, and I’m glad he did.”

Once Crosby “played out,” it was over. He would become the best skater on the ice at every level, including the NHL, where he has twice been MVP.

But Crosby is still between the pipes in some of his favorite hockey memories. Whatever the weather, his buddies spent many days on a street chasing after a hockey ball, a tennis ball or whatever else they scrounged up from a garage.

“We probably spent more time playing street hockey,” he said, “than we did on the ice.”

The lone net was often protected by Crosby, eager to scratch that goalie itch.

“It was a different look. I think I liked all the action,” he said. “A lot of times you only had one net and one goalie, so you were getting peppered out there.”

He admired Roy and J.S. Giguère, “the big butterfly guys back then.” He enjoyed Martin Brodeur’s athletic style, too, and Dominik Hasek’s snow angels.

“I tried to be a mix,” he said, chuckling. “I probably wasn’t good at any of them.”

But, as you can probably imagine, he battled. Perhaps a little too much at times.

“Just being with your buddies and getting into little scraps, we still talk about some of those games today,” he said. “Some of the long games we had, some of the weather we played in and all that stuff. It was just a lot of fun doing that.”

Crosby said he has never actually played goalie “competitively” on ice. He occasionally gets in goal “when there is a father-son game or a fun game like that.”

Sidney was apparently not as persistent as his little sister, Taylor. She finally talked Troy and Trina Crosby into buying her a pair of leg pads when she was 10.

She followed in her big brother’s footsteps by attending Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Minnesota, then played goalie collegiately at Northeastern and St. Cloud State.

Troy was a good enough goalie to be selected by the Montreal Canadiens late in the 1984 NHL draft, nine rounds after Roy and 241 slots after the Penguins took that Lemieux guy. Troy never played in the league.

He did, however, help his son get there by being a tutor.

Sidney said he hasn’t really thought about what might have been had he been allowed to dedicate himself to stopping goals instead of scoring them. Sitting at his locker last week, he was asked if he still would have made it to the NHL.

“I don’t know. I loved hockey, so I would have definitely done everything that I could. But with how big goalies are now, it would be a pretty tall order,” said Crosby who, at 5-foot-11, would be one of the NHL’s shortest goalies.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Crosby from hoping. Two summers ago, Crosby told The Dan Patrick Show that he’d “love to play one” NHL game in net.

Heck, he would be thrilled to do it for one practice. Crosby over the years has lobbied the Penguins to let him fill in whenever one of their regular goalies is unexpectedly forced to sit out a practice with an injury or illness.

Alas, that role is currently held by another Cole Harbour kid — Mike Chiasson, Crosby’s childhood friend and the organization’s manager of youth hockey.

So, Crosby is forced to get in his kicks — and kick saves — in the offseason.

At least a couple of times each year, Crosby straps on the pads and blocks some hockey balls. He has made headlines for dropping in on local dek hockey games. And he still gets together with his childhood buddies once a year.

“I’m always in net, trying to battle, getting worse every year,” he said with a grin. “But it’s fun. … It brings you back to when you’re a kid and I ended up in there.”