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DETROIT — The centerpiece of the NHL's hopes for coming back from obscurity on the American sporting scene, its first mainstream star since Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were in their primes, is a 20-year-old Maritimer with a sparse crop of whiskers on his chin that can hardly claim to be a playoff beard.
But ever since Sidney Crosby surfaced as the next great hockey superstar at the age of 16, the league has been waiting for this moment.
When Crosby takes the stage for his first Stanley Cup final tonight, it will be earlier than even the NHL hoped for, given the quick rise of him and his equally young Pittsburgh Penguins teammates. But it will be a welcome debut for a league still struggling to bounce back from the disastrous 2004-05 lockout.
Even better for the league is that this year's final between the Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings will match the two most skilled teams in the league. Ideally, when the casual U.S. sporting fans, whom the league has been trying to win back without success since the lockout, tune in to see Crosby, they will finally see the NHL really does have a flashier, faster version of hockey. That the bad old days of obstruction are finally gone.
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But most of those anticipated television viewers will be there first to watch Crosby, the young man from Cole Harbour, N.S.
He is still the Penguins' top star despite the rise of Evgeni Malkin this season while Crosby was out with a sprained ankle.
"I think Sidney Crosby is the face of our game in the United States," Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said yesterday. "I think most people recognize the name in the United States. He's on centre stage."
Crosby's handlers have spent years preparing him for this role. Indeed, he sounds uncannily like Gretzky did in his early years, talkative without revealing much of himself or saying anything controversial. This may not make him the voice or conscience of hockey but it keeps the marketing people happy.
The even-tempered face Crosby presents to the world is remarkable. His star has risen to the point where all his interviews are conducted at a podium because the media crush is too large for his locker. If the daily demands of the same questions from reporters and appearances on behalf of the team or the league or corporate sponsors ever grow onerous, only his family and close friends know. But as the playoffs progressed, the outside responsibilities were curtailed.
"I think I've always tried to be a good professional and tried to be a good role model. But I don't think I let that hang on myself," Crosby said. "As far as the media stuff, I think in a way I've learned to say no a little bit more. I still realize I have a job to do as far as trying to handle interviews and things like that. I think I've cut back a little bit."
Like Gretzky, Crosby has a passion for the game. He spends much of his leisure time watching other NHL games and he loves to get his nose dirty, as the hockey people say, in his own games.
Being mindful of that, says Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock, is the key to stopping Crosby. That job will fall to the Red Wings' Big Five unit of forwards Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom and defencemen Nicklas Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski because Babcock believes in matching skill with skill. But the coach also thinks stopping players like Crosby cold "is impossible."
"But you're going to try to slow them down and try to be in good spots defensively," Babcock said. "We'll play skill on skill. I think it's harder for skilled players to have to defend and play offence at the same time.
"What I see in Crosby is a great passion for playing. I see a bottom half of a body that looks like his legs never stop moving. Great strength, a really good skater. And good courage. Goes to the net hard. You're not going to back him off."
Babcock says you can also dismiss any notion that Crosby's age and first time on hockey's biggest stage will work against him.
"When I saw him the first time it was at the world junior tournament," Babcock said. "He was the first-line centre when he was 16 or 17.
"He's always been ahead of himself. So that makes him probably about 25, hockey-wise."
