NHL needs to protect its best asset
‘Haphazardly’ applied rules leave league’s brightest star exposed to unnecessary risk
Back in 2009, there was a story doing the rounds about veteran forward Bill Guerin, who had been traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins at the trade deadline.
Guerin was out having dinner that night, celebrating a deal that would give him a shot at the Stanley Cup, when his phone rang. It was Sidney Crosby, the young captain of the Penguins, calling to welcome the new addition to the team — and to talk hockey, going into detail as to where and how a veteran like Guerin could help the club.
Crosby was right. Although the two had a brief screaming match after the first shift of Game 7 of the final against Detroit that year, Guerin did take some of the leadership burden off the 21-year-old Crosby — and he was one of the first people Crosby thanked after Pittsburgh won its first Stanley Cup with the youngster wearing the ‘C.’
But that call to Guerin was the act of a young man totally immersed in hockey. Gifted, determined, already wealthy — but above all, living the sport with every fibre of his being.
That is Sidney Crosby. He is the face of the NHL, a twotime Stanley Cup winner, now grinding it out in pursuit of a third ring, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, the league’s best player. In an era without a single towering figure like Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky, Crosby is the man.
And if Crosby will never be a wild man, a great quote or Hollywood’s idea of a sports star, he is still the all-Canadian boy, the one who will never embarrass himself, his team, his league or the game itself. Neither will he blow his own horn: Crosby does tireless work for charity, but tends to do it away from the spotlight. As a result, he often gets less credit than he deserves.
All in all, Crosby is everything the Penguins could have hoped for when they drafted him first overall in 2005 — leader, model citizen and a player so good he has relegated Evgeni Malkin, another future Hall of Famer, to second-fiddle status.
So why does the game’s greatest ambassador get so little protection from the NHL? Why is its much-ballyhooed concussion protocol such a joke it can’t even protect the league’s most important player? Why does the league fail to grasp that a player as dedicated and as immersed in the game as Crosby occasionally needs to be protected from himself?
Why, after being concussed by a cross-check in Game 3 of the Washington series and falling heavily into the boards and getting up slowly in Game 6, was Crosby out there playing 23 minutes against Ottawa in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final?
Given Crosby’s concussion history, you would think the NHL would bend over backward not to expose him to further risk. Instead, he missed one game after being concussed in Game 3 and none after the Game 6 crash. Bad enough the league’s concussion protocol is haphazardly applied — but the most effective step in protecting players isn’t applied at all. That’s calling penalties for dangerous plays and calling them consistently.
Suspensions are after the fact. Penalties called on the spot are, I would argue, easier for players to understand. In this instance, Matt Niskanen was given a fiveminute major and a game misconduct for the cross-check that concussed Crosby during the Washington series — a penalty levied, really, because Crosby fell, so Niskanen hit his head rather than his body.
But if not for the way penalties are called to begin with, would Crosby have been hit? Consider the case of Brendan Gallagher. He’s everybody’s target. I’d love to see a count on the number of times Gallagher was bushwhacked during the Canadiens’ six-game series against the New York Rangers. He was crosschecked, butt-ended, speared, slashed and elbowed by the Rangers defence while the refs swallowed their whistles.
It’s the playoffs, after all, and Gallagher is Gallagher: the league’s officials decided long ago, for reasons of their own, Gallagher would not be afforded their protection.
What does Gallagher have to do with Crosby? Everything. When you pocket your whistles in the post-season, when defenders are given carte blanche to abuse players like Gallagher, then the cross-check becomes so routine I actually checked in the rule book to be sure it was still there.
That’s what it was when Crosby went down: routine. A hit you see a dozen times a game, except for the result.
When Crosby was 16, I drove through a hairy January snowstorm in the Parc national de Jacques Cartier to talk to him in Chicoutimi. The kid I interviewed over the breakfast table was the kind of son you’d like to raise: hard working, polite, talented. He was the sort of young man who would earn and deserve all the protection he could be given in a fast and dangerous sport.
Since that morning in Chicoutimi, everything has worked out beyond Crosby’s dreams. Everything, that is, except the part where the NHL takes care of its own.
So why does the game’s greatest ambassador get so little protection from the NHL?