INSIDE HOCKEY

Sidney Crosby came into the league under the weight of enormous expectations. He was the prize of the 2005 Entry Draft, a teenage phenom, the face of the NHL from the moment he stepped into the league. They called him “The Next One.”

Now, in just the fourth year of his NHL career, they can simply call him a champion.

Crosby had already become the youngest-ever player to win the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading scorer, the second-youngest to win the Hart Trophy as its MVP and the youngest to be named captain of his team. Now, with his team’s Game Seven victory Friday night at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, the 21-year-old Crosby has become the youngest captain to ever hoist the Stanley Cup.

Winning a dramatic Game Seven to skate with the Cup was nothing Crosby hadn’t imagined a thousand times before, playing on the streets and outdoor rinks while growing up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. In reality, however, the way that decisive game unfolded was markedly different than it had been in his dreams.

About six minutes into the second period, Crosby and Red Wings forward Johan Franzen collided awkwardly into the boards, with Crosby’s left knee taking the brunt of the hit. He was in visible pain, dragging his leg as he made his way first to the bench, then to the locker room, where trainers tried everything they could to get the Penguins’ leader back on the ice.

“I don’t know if I chipped the puck or somehow the puck got ahead of me, and Franzen kind of finished me,” Crosby said. “I tried to avoid it, and the outside of my knee got jammed between his hip and the dasher, the ledge on the boards. I took my skate off and tried to move it around, but I couldn’t really walk. They gave me as much numbing as they possibly could, and I still couldn’t really skate that much.”

Crosby returned for the start of the third period, but managed only one, 32-second shift. That was enough to convince him to make a smart, mature decision that many players of his stature might have had a hard time coming to terms with in a winner-take-all Game Seven – that attempting to play would hurt his team more than help.

“I didn’t have a choice; I couldn’t really do anything out there,” he said. “I tried everything I could, and it just wasn’t working. I had a good idea I wasn’t going to be able to, but until I got out there and played a shift, I probably wouldn’t have been satisfied in my mind. Once I got out there, within 10 seconds I knew I couldn’t really turn or stop. At the same time, I’m playing against [Pavel] Datsyuk and [Henrik] Zetterberg; one misstep and I could cost the guys a lot of hard work. I didn’t want to be the guy who did that.”

So instead of scoring the game-winning goal to secure Lord Stanley’s hardware, the invariable scenario in any youngster’s dreams, Crosby was forced to watch from the bench as the Wings – down 2-0 thanks to two goals from sparkplug forward Max Talbot – went on the attack in the Pittsburgh zone in a frantic, desperate third period. Defensemen Nicklas Lidstrom and Jonathan Ericsson combined to get Detroit on the board with just over six minutes remaining, slashing the Penguins’ lead to a single goal. And the Wings didn’t stop coming until the final buzzer, when goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury made a spectacular save on Detroit captain Lidstrom with just one second remaining, then paused for a moment before throwing his arms up to celebrate, unsure of whether it was really all over.

“Being a captain and seeing what the guys are doing out there, blocking shots, how intense it was, it was even more painful to see it go like that,” said Crosby. “It was so hard watching the clock tick down for that whole third period. But we don’t get to this point without everyone contributing, and I knew the guys were going to find a way to pull it off.”

And once they did – once Commissioner Gary Bettman presented Crosby with the gleaming chalice that will soon bear his name – the young captain reflected on a life spent working toward that very moment.

“It means so much,” he said. “It’s all the sacrifices that people make so you can get to this point. It’s my parents; it’s the coaches you have along the way. You’re preparing for a Game Seven in the Stanley Cup Final, and the only thing I could think about is all these people who are watching, and all these people I wanted to do it for personally. And it’s the guy next to you, the guys who have fought so hard to get to this point.”

Talbot was 16 when he met a 13-year-old Crosby at the World Junior Camp in Los Angeles. “He was there just skating by himself, having all the attention at this age. He [already] had an agent,” Talbot said. “Since that we’ve had a chance to share a lot together, and you know what, he is our team. He is the heart and soul of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and he is our leader. What he brings every day to the rink is special. The pressure he had to go through to become that player is really special. And today is so special to win that for him, with him.”

Crosby’s work ethic and dedication also hasn’t gone unnoticed by his team’s owner, a guy who knows a little something about winning Stanley Cups and has welcomed Crosby as a resident in his family’s home for the past four seasons.

“This kid, that’s all he thinks about, winning championships,” said Mario Lemieux, who raised the Cup Friday night for the first time since doing it as the Penguins’ captain in 1991 and 1992. “His whole life is about training and playing hockey and practicing. He’s the perfect hockey player; that’s all he does. I wish I would have had that discipline back then.”

With his first Stanley Cup championship just about 36 hours old, Crosby met with the media one last time Sunday morning before heading to PNC Park with a group of teammates to take the field with the trophy at a Pittsburgh Pirates game. The playoffs’ second-leading scorer – with 31 points, Crosby finished five behind teammate Evgeni Malkin, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP – was still smiling, but also looking forward to getting some rest.

“It’s everything I expected and probably more. It’s a great feeling and we’re all really happy, but at the same time we’re all pretty tired at this point,” he said. “You don’t let fatigue sneak into your mind when you’re playing, but once everything slows down it starts to catch up to you and you realize how grueling of a run it is. It’s been a long few days, but it’s well worth it.”

The reaction since the team returned to Pittsburgh in the wee hours of Saturday morning has been “incredible,” said Crosby, who drove home from the airport with the Stanley Cup in his passenger seat. “That was pretty cool,” he grinned. “The guys had it last night on [the South Side’s] Carson Street, and to see the Cup among that many people and the attention it draws, whether you’re a hockey fan or not, there’s something about it that’s just so special. I don’t think you see that in any other sport, where guys get to spend so much time with the trophy they worked so hard to get. It was out of a second story building for a while; guys were holding it. It was amazing.”

Before Crosby and his team can catch up on their sleep, however, there’s one small matter to take care of – the parade. The team will be honored Monday at noon along the exact same parade route taken by the NFL-champion Pittsburgh Steelers four months ago.

“When they won the Super Bowl we were all together watching, and we drove home and were able to see the streets and the reaction,” Crosby said. “It was hard because we were mostly looking back, thinking what it could’ve been like for us the year before. Now we’ve got our chance here to see it and take it in.”