BOSTON — When Drew Doughty received his first style of best-on-best hockey, he was the youngest member of Workforce Canada on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and issues didn’t begin so effectively for him.
Naturally, it was a dialog with one of many “veterans” that helped him reverse course and switch the occasion right into a career-shifting expertise.
By no means thoughts that the participant was simply two years, 4 months and sooner or later older than Doughty. It was the kind of participant who was born a veteran.
It was Sidney Crosby.
“He was younger,” Doughty recollects, “however I bear in mind after one in all our first practices I used to be strolling onto the bus and he was like, ‘Hey, come sit beside me.’ That was the primary time I had an actual dialog with him. He knew I used to be nervous as hell, and he introduced me in and sat me down.”
On the floor, that’s a fairly easy anecdote. Nevertheless it begins to tackle extra heft when you see the sample repeat itself many times in tales shared by Canadian gamers and employees who’ve labored with Crosby underneath the searing warmth lamp of the nationwide workforce setting.
Along with the bodily and psychological items that made him one of many sport’s few really generational gamers, the 37-year-old possesses a stage of consciousness and emotional intelligence which have taken him to a different stage totally.
As shut good friend Nathan MacKinnon places it: “I’m certain there’s quite a lot of profitable folks that nobody actually needs to be round, however guys simply gravitate in the direction of him. He’s received an superior persona. He’s an amazing storyteller. He’s only a enjoyable man to be round.”
It’s no coincidence that Crosby now finds himself in place to say a fourth consecutive best-on-best event victory when Canada faces Workforce USA within the championship recreation of the 4 Nations Face-Off on Thursday evening.
Teammates say Sidney Crosby has a “calming impact” underneath the brilliant highlight of the Canadian nationwide workforce. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Pictures)
His potential to attach with teammates shines by way of most in short-term, high-pressure tournaments, the place even NHL stars battle nerves. Not solely does Crosby perceive easy methods to deliver a workforce collectively, but additionally he helps hold it collectively when the strain spikes. Do not forget that these occasions sometimes function a number of single-game eliminations, an outsized quantity of consideration and the uncertainty constructed right into a recreation determined by a bouncing piece of rubber on ice.
“When he’s in your locker room, you at all times suppose you’re going to win,” says former teammate Matt Duchene of Crosby, with whom he gained an Olympics, a world championship and a World Cup.
“It’s simply the aura he provides off in there. The quiet depth and confidence he has — you already know there’s no second too large for him. Even when he possibly feels nerves or no matter inside, he certain doesn’t present it.”
Even because the oldest participant on the 4 Nations, Crosby continues to show an impeccable sense of timing. When Finland scored twice with its goalie pulled on Monday afternoon, it was Crosby who halted the freight practice by delivering an open-ice hit on Mikael Granlund earlier than firing the puck into an empty web.
“He’s a pacesetter,” teammate Brandon Hagel says. “He’s one of the best on the planet, in my view. There’s no man that does it like him — the way in which he portrays himself and the way humble he’s. It’s unbelievable to observe. Even final evening, it will get somewhat shut, who’s it that places the icing on the cake?
“It’s Sid.”
This has been a special nationwide workforce expertise than people who got here earlier than it.
MacKinnon says it’s Crosby’s first time enjoying with a workforce filled with his greatest followers and, whereas half-joking, that sentiment rings true. Doughty and Brad Marchand are the one gamers he’s beforehand gained with. And ask the youthful gamers on the roster about their private encounters with No. 87 throughout this occasion and so they mild up.
Mitch Marner says his additional time winner over Sweden was surreal as a result of it got here on an help from his boyhood hero. Thomas Harley calls Crosby a “god,” including, “You’ll go blind if you happen to have a look at him too lengthy.” And 23-year-old Seth Jarvis remains to be buzzing concerning the truth Crosby took the time to introduce himself following a Carolina Hurricanes-Pittsburgh Penguins recreation in January.
“Nicely, f—,” Jarvis says. “I wasn’t about to method him. I’d be somewhat starstruck.”
These private touches go a great distance towards creating a snug workforce setting.
Ryan Getzlaf, who gained two Olympic gold medals alongside Crosby and now serves as Hockey Canada’s participant relations adviser, says, “Sid’s a special cat” in a best-on-best setting due to how keen he’s to diagram performs and break the sport right down to a minute stage.
Requested if that will be intimidating for a workforce of gamers who grew up idolizing him, Getzlaf replies: “No, not at this stage. If he’s speaking to you, you most likely really feel good.”
At his core, Crosby is a particulars man.
Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby have been amongst Canada’s prime 4 Nations performers. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Pictures)
When he met Hockey Canada govt Scott Salmond for breakfast in Calgary in October, Crosby already knew which nations have been seeded in the identical pool as Canada on the 2026 Milan Olympics. He requested questions on membership groups enjoying within the Champions Hockey League in Europe. Salmond doesn’t suppose he’s ever had a extra thorough dialogue with a participant.
All through the 4 Nations event, head coach Jon Cooper has raved about Crosby’s influence on the group. Whereas wanting to maintain particular particulars in-house, he notes {that a} ebook could possibly be written about the way in which his captain conducts himself and helps put the workforce in place to win.
“There’s no shock or shock about why this child has gained as a lot as he has,” Cooper says. “There’s not a flaw in him, in any method. You discuss cool issues to be part of. This can be a cool factor to be part of as a result of he’s right here.”
As a reminder of how lengthy Crosby has been doing this for Canada: Cooper was nonetheless teaching within the USHL when he scored the Golden Aim in Vancouver. Crosby’s the one member of the Triple Gold Membership to finish all three legs as a captain, and Scott Niedermayer, the final man to put on the nation’s “C” earlier than Crosby, believes he was able to be a pacesetter whilst a 22-year-old underneath an intense highlight on the 2010 Video games.
“He may have been captain in Vancouver, too,” Niedermayer says. “He understood what it took to have success not solely as a person however most likely extra importantly as a workforce.”
The nationwide workforce has gone 47-6 with Crosby in uniform, relationship to the 2004 World Juniors. Previous to that, he as soon as served as a stick boy for a Canadian world junior summer season camp in Halifax.
You may take the boy out of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, however fame and fortune by no means took any of the Cole Harbour out of Crosby.
Marchand may solely chuckle throughout a latest dinner at his buddy’s home in suburban Pittsburgh when he walked into the lounge and noticed a rocking chair made totally out of wooden from Halifax.
“That’s what he sits in each day,” Marchand says. “He’s only a very down-to-earth man, which at his stage and the issues that he’s completed doesn’t occur typically. An incredible quantity of respect for him.”
Everybody right here does.
There aren’t any shortcuts to the unfathomable heights Crosby has climbed. His trophy case is spilling over, and nonetheless he grinds on for extra, placing up 5 factors in three video games throughout a 4 Nations event the place he’s performed by way of harm. He’s constructed a compelling argument to go down as probably the most completed Canadian males’s hockey participant of all time.
Crosby believes one of the best leaders command a room just by being themselves, and in order the hours and minutes tick right down to puck drop on Thursday’s 4 Nations championship he gained’t stray from a extremely targeted and concentrated gameday routine. And any teammate wanting in his course can have full confidence that Captain Canada is able to prepared the ground.
“He has a relaxing impact,” Duchene says. “I bear in mind on the (2014) Olympics actually feeling that method. I used to be 22 years previous and taking a look at him and guys that had been there, achieved that, that helps you are feeling somewhat bit extra courageous going on the market representing Canada.”
(Prime picture: Vitor Munhoz / Getty Pictures)