Why ‘Sid the kid’ ruins the Penguins

Sid the kid. The golden child. Sidney Crosby, the greatest hockey player in the world is the Pittsburgh Penguins’ star center. At 19 he was the only teenager to ever lead the NHL in scoring and became just the seventh player to win the Art Ross Trophy, Hart Memorial Trophy and Lester B. Pearson Award in the same season. Now he’s 22 and, in less than one year, has become the youngest captain to ever hoist the Stanley Cup and followed it up last month by scoring the winning goal in overtime to grab a gold medal at the winter Olympics. He’s done it all. The next great one. He’s a national hero.

One small problem, though. That nation is Canada.

There’s almost nothing worse than someone who decides they like a team right after they win a championship. You know the people I’m talking about. The ones who claim to be life-long Yankees fans but don’t even know who Roger Maris is. The kids who love the Dallas Cowboys but have never even been within 100 miles of the Mason-Dixon line. Front-runners. People who follow up any argument with, “Well at least my team has [insert large, probably inaccurate number] of titles, how many does your team have?”

It can even be annoying when it’s a team you like. How many fans did the Red Sox magically pick up in the Spring of 2005, (which, by the way, is the reason I can no longer afford a ticket at Fenway Park)? Remember two years ago when the Celtics were the only thing that ever mattered to people at KSC who previously had never even uttered the word basketball?

As far as winning teams go, the Pittsburgh Penguins aren’t the Celtics of the NHL (that would be the Montreal Canadiens, with a whopping 24 Stanley Cup victories). In fact, the Penguins are an overall pretty modest team.

Part of the initial NHL expansion, the Penguins played their first game in 1967 and didn’t win their first Cup until 1991, proceeding to successfully defend it the following year. Then another dry spell came until last year’s victory over the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals.

In fact, the Penguins were heavy underdogs last year and came back from a two game deficit to beat the Red Wings in a thrilling game seven. Currently, the Penguins are leading nothing. They sit in second place in their own division trailing the New Jersey Devils.
None of that changes the fact that they are defending champions of the NHL. It also doesn’t change the fact they have Sidney Crosby on their roster.

Sidney Crosby is by all accounts the next Wayne Gretzky and at such a young age, has accomplished more then most can even dream of. Sidney Crosby is also, by all accounts, a great guy, beloved in Pittsburgh and Canada for his dedication and hard work to the sport he loves.

I hate Sidney Crosby more than just about anyone else on the face of the planet.
Sports fandom is a complicated love-hate relationship exclusively represented by a lack of rationale. There’s no reason why we should stay attached to teams that change players, managers and ownership more often then we elect senators in this country, but we do.
Much like we hate sports teams for reasons that sometimes we can’t even remember. I’ve held a grudge against the Los Angeles Angels for over ten years because in 1995 Jim Edmonds played center field for them.

I’m not even exactly sure why I didn’t like Edmonds but certainly his name is incredibly boring which doesn’t help. There’s just no place for logic when you’re passionate about sports.

Teams we love, we love. Their strengths we embellish and their faults we brush off. Teams we hate, we hate and, once you a hate a team, you can never learn to love them.
In 2005, the Pittsburgh Penguins drafted the highly touted Sidney Crosby and four years later won a Stanley Cup Final and for that I’ll never hang a Penguin’s scarf on the walls of my room, regardless of the fact that they’ll still be a team long after Crosby is gone.
My lasting image of Sidney Crosby will forever be him shooting a puck between the unfortunate legs of Ryan Miller in Vancouver in 2010, ruining my life-long dream of seeing the USA beat Canada for the gold medal in ice hockey. (This dream is actually only two weeks old but who’s counting?)

Sid, you broke my heart kid. And no, I’ll never forgive you; or the Pittsburgh Penguins.
   
Brian Anderson can be contacted at banderson@keeneequinox.com