Just In Case You Forgot, Sidney Crosby Is Still The Best Hockey Player On The Planet
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.Over the past 6-7 years, a lot of focus has been placed on Connor McDavid. And for good reason. He is a 5x Art Ross winner. A 3x Hart Trophy winner. He led the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final last year, and was the first player since 2003 to win the Conn Smythe despite his team losing in the final. He has at least 2 more gears than any other player on the planet, makes ridiculous highlight reel plays every time he touches the ice, and he's still in his 20's. So you can understand how Connor McDavid would become the face of the league.
This past year, a lot of focus has been placed on Alexander Ovechkin. And for good reason. He's now just 16 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky's career goal total, which is one of the most ridiculous records in hockey history that we thought would never be broken. Ovi is 39-years-old, and he's scoring at a 40+ goal rate this season despite missing a few weeks with a whole entire broken leg. He has 26 goals on the year, and should be able to break the record this season if he keeps at that pace. Considering he's showing no signs of slowing down, it's only a matter of time.
Looks like we all forgot about a little someone named Sidney Crosby. But don't fret, he's going to use the 4 Nations Face-Off to remind everybody that as long as he has a pair of skates on his feet and he's on a sheet of ice, he's still the best hockey player on the planet. 37-years-old or not, this game still belongs to Sid. Especially when he puts that Canadian sweater over his pads.
2x Olympic gold medalist. 2015 World Championship gold. 2016 World Cup gold. 2005 World Juniors gold. Find somebody who has done and meant more to Canadian hockey than Sidney Crosby. You cannot. Which you can tell by the way he was serenaded by the crowd in Montreal last night.
3 assists on the night for the old man in the 4 Nations opener. I'm not going to say that each assist was sicker than the last, because that just wouldn't be true. This first assist was as nasty as they come. Made me want to puke all over myself how ridiculous this pass was.
No-look, backhand, through a diving Mattias Ekholm, right on the money for his Cole Harbor neighbor Nathan MacKinnon. Just as vintage Sid as they come. He always seems to be an extra step ahead of the best players in the world.
The 2nd assist to Stone showed that Crosby still has the wheels at 37 to turn on the jets and push Forsling to overcommit. He knew he was going to drop this puck off to Stone the moment he crossed the blueline, but he drags everybody down towards the goal line with him so it opened up more space to put that puck on Stone's tape with plenty of room for him to get a shot off.
Speed. Skill. And just a silly amount of awareness.
And then you have the OT game winner. I'll be totally honest--I don't know if this drop pass was always intended to go back to Marner.
It looked like he saw Devon Toews come off the bench and may have been leaving it behind for him to grab. But either way, the mega drop gave Marner all the space he needed to build up a little speed entering the zone and deliver the OT dagger.
By the way--I know the players hate it, but holy shit is the game so much more exciting when 3v3 overtime is 10 minutes long. Imagine if the first game of this tournament was decided by a shootout? That would be brutal. But a few extra minutes of 3v3? That's where the ultimate chaos is. Everybody is running on empty, anything can happen, plenty of chances back and forth. That overtime was awesome.
Fact of the matter here is that if you give Sidney Crosby an opportunity to play with the best players on the world, he's always going to show you that he's still the top dog. I'm sure he idolizes Mario Lemieux, and I'm sure he finds something special about only wearing one jersey for his entire career. But a tournament like this really makes you think about what the end of Sid's career could look like if he wasn't stuck in Pittsburgh, 6 points away from the bottom of the eastern conference.