Wayne Gretzky's Ghost

by Roy MacGregor

  * Player salaries and franchise values in U.S. dollars

  FOUR

  STARS

  THE ABSURDITY OF “SID THE KID”

  (The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2009)

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  He finished hurt, but he finished what he set out to do. What some would even say he had to do. This morning, the scraggly playoff beard will mercifully go. It’s time to show equal mercy to the nickname. “Sid the Kid” no longer makes much sense.

  He is only twenty-one, but Sidney Crosby, as of the lifting of the 2009 Stanley Cup following his Pittsburgh Penguins’ 2–1 victory over the defending champion Detroit Red Wings, is no longer much of a “kid.” He stands, instead, as the best North American, by far, in the National Hockey League and Canada’s only sensible choice to lead the country back to the gold medal as captain of the Olympic team.

  He is not only a player of enormous top-speed skill but one of those rare players who has no need of that number, 87, to be recognized on the ice. When not forced to conceal an injury—he was hurt last night by a second-period check from Detroit’s Johan Franzen—he moves about the rink, as nearby Windsor poet Marty Gervais once wrote,

  as swift

  and keen and graceful

  as a hawk above

  a morning meadow.

  “I don’t recommend anyone trying to watch the Stanley Cup final from the bench,” Crosby said after his left knee was hurt.

  Two years in a row Crosby has led his young teammates to the Stanley Cup final. In his fourth year in the league, he made it all the way. It took Wayne Gretzky five seasons to reach his first Cup. “That’s how I want to be measured,” the native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, said. “The Stanley Cup. That’s how you measure everyone.”

  If Detroit can fairly be called a “dynasty” of sorts for its four Cups since 1997, then it is fair to suggest that a new reign, or semi-reign, may be under way with the Penguins. With Crosby and lesser stars bound to long-term contracts, Pittsburgh is likely to compete seriously for some time to come. Sidney Crosby, after all, could still be a half-dozen years away from what is usually a superior player’s peak. Same goes for Evgeni Malkin, Crosby’s twenty-two-year-old Russian teammate, the NHL’s regular-season scoring leader, the leading playoff scorer, and one of the three finalists for the Hart Trophy that goes to the league’s most valuable player.

  Detroit coach Mike Babcock was quoting his general manager, Ken Holland, the other day when he said Holland’s “big theory is you knock on the door, you knock on the door, you knock on the door every year and eventually they open the door.”

  That door opened wide last night thanks to Maxime Talbot’s two goals and a breathtaking night by Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-André Fleury. While it must bother Crosby that for possibly the first time in his life he has not been his team’s top scorer, there is no indication that Malkin is anything but content to play second fiddle and “A” to the younger Crosby’s “C.” All Malkin wanted, he said this week, was to have an equivalent photograph taken to that one back in Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena that shows Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr holding up the 1992 Stanley Cup.

  “It’s my dream,” Malkin said in his halting English. “Me and Sid, just like that.”

  Malkin and Crosby were brilliant in Pittsburgh’s conference final against Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, a series so highly skilled and dramatic that, in many ways, it is unfortunate that it could not be a final, something that cannot happen under the current east–west division of the league.

  That is not, however, to diminish the Red Wings. Thanks to the merciless checking of Henrik Zetterberg, Crosby had been held to just two assists in five Stanley Cup games at the Joe Louis Arena this year and last when the puck dropped. He should have had another during Pittsburgh’s first power play, when he set up Malkin at the side of the net, only to have the puck bounce badly. He never had another chance, leaving after the Franzen check and returning in the third only to sit, grimacing, at the end of the bench.

  When healthy, however, he has the gift and it is obvious in every game he plays, score or not. “I wonder about it,” the poet Gervais asked,

  where they found

  that inherent

  skill that natural

  beauty that way

  about them as they

  float before a goalie

  with all the confidence

  of a magician playing

  out a sleight of hand.

  No one knows where it comes from, just that few have it and a great many do not. But Crosby—speaking so quietly every day this spring from the cover of a frayed Penguins cap—has also demonstrated that, at only twenty-one, he has inherited that curious quiet mantle that is the mark of the truly great Canadian players. Jean Béliveau and Gordie Howe passed it on to Bobby Orr, and from Orr to Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. There have not been many, but it seems only appropriate that Crosby be next in line, taking it from Lemieux, the last captain to take Canada to Olympic gold, the owner of the Penguins and still Sidney Crosby’s landlord.

  It’s time for the beard to go, time to move out. And time to leave behind “Sid the Kid.” It no longer applies.

  The thinking that Sidney Crosby was still far from his peak came true in 2010–11, when he set a blistering pace during the first half: 66 points in 41 games, including a 25-game scoring streak. Sadly, what might have stood as his greatest season came to a crashing halt on New Year’s Day, when he was knocked to the ice in the Winter Classic and then, a few days later, hit into the boards. His season was over, another victim of concussion.

  OVIE, OVIE, OVIE!

  (The Globe and Mail, May 6, 2009)

  There’s nothing wrong with the ad—but perhaps the casting could be better.

  The commercial is for Tim Hortons coffee, Canada’s official blood, and it involves a team bus pulling over on a dark winter’s evening, snow gently falling as the disappointed driver announces, “Sorry guys, looks like this is going to take a while.” There are children playing shinny on a nearby frozen pond, and one of the players on the bus sees this through the window he was likely just sleeping against. He gets out with his skates and stick and goes to the pond, turning one youngster speechless with a simple, “Can I play?”

  That’s Sidney Crosby asking; Alexander Ovechkin wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t want to lose any playing time. “Did I miss anything?” a man arriving late asks as the bus starts up again, Crosby back aboard.

  Well, if he missed the first two games of the Eastern Conference semifinals, Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals against Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins, he may have missed the finest hockey exhibition that the so-called new NHL has seen. Canada’s Best Player against Canada’s Favourite Player. Make that the World’s Favourite Player—at least in the world of imagination that is inhabited by the very young.

  They could make a sweeter ad right in Ovechkin’s very own neighbourhood in Arlington, Virginia, where the Washington Capitals star lives. A year ago during the playoffs, children from a nearby elementary school began leaving handwritten notes, and the odd teddy bear, on his doorstep to wish him luck.

  Children can be harsh critics, as well. After one 7–1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers this season, Ovechkin stepped out to find someone had left an egg but no note—no note required to say he had just laid one himself.

  Ovechkin’s popularity among children seems sure to rival that of past idols such as Wayne Gretzky and the Maurice (Rocket) Richard of Roch Carrier’s “The Hockey Sweater.” This is not a knock against Crosby’s phenomenal skills, not in the least—he matched Ovechkin goal-for-goal Monday night as each scored a brilliant hat trick and Ovechkin’s team won 4–3, giving Washington a 2–0 series lead—but it is a recognition that Ovechkin touches something that is denied most stars.

  Children love his absolute joy of playing. They love the leap into the boards after every goal. They love the new hip bump with which twenty-three-year-old Ovechkin and young tw
enty-one-year-old Nicklas Backstrom celebrate victories. They loved Ovechkin’s clown getup for the shooting competition at the All-Star Game. And they loved his stick-on-fire routine following his fiftieth goal of the season.

  Don Cherry attacked Ovechkin for this on Coach’s Corner, and the support for Ovechkin’s bringing a little delight to the game was so overwhelming that, in subsequent weeks, Cherry backed off and even began praising the Russian star. Ovechkin is not only good for the game, he is becoming the game, just as only Gretzky has done previously.

  So great has been his impact on the Capitals that his thirteen-year, $124-million contract now seems a bargain. But his impact is far beyond that, heard in every road hockey and mini-sticks game in the world. Kids simply take to him. Perhaps it is because his Stone Age features give him the look of an action figure—one whose every stride and shot is so instantly recognizable he no longer needs that number, 8, to be identified. Perhaps because he is Captain Underpants to Crosby’s Curious George, somehow more modern, more mischievous, more alluring to them.

  Crosby is huge in Pittsburgh—he’s nearly five storeys high on a banner hanging from the new rink going up at the corner of Washington Place and Fifth Avenue—and huge in Canada, where it is hoped he will bring back Olympic gold; but his demeanour at the rink is as though he has come to a board meeting of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. Ovechkin, on the other hand, always looks like recess has just been let out.

  It is hard to believe that a generation ago Russian players—then known as Soviet Union players—were routinely dismissed as “robots.” It was a knock that began in the 1972 Summit Series and lasted through to glasnost. Writing in 1987, columnist John Robertson reflected the thoughts of many when he complained he was sick of hearing that “the red robots from the Soviet Union” were giving lessons “on how our game should be played.”

  “In a pig’s ear,” Robertson railed. “The so-called Soviet system so many of our hockey geniuses see fit to applaud and envy, is inseparable from the abysmal depths of human degradation inflicted upon all Soviet citizens by the intrinsically evil rulers in the Kremlin.”

  It was said then that what would always separate Canadian hockey players from Russian players was “heart.” The sort of passion Bobby Clarke showed in 1972 when he deliberately broke Valeri Kharlamov’s ankle to help his team win. Some Soviet players even acknowledged this critical difference; one player, Slava Fetisov, even called himself and his teammates “robots on ice.” But then everything changed.

  The wall fell and Fetisov and many of his teammates came to play in the NHL. No one ever again questioned Russian “heart” after the Russian Five—Fetisov, Igor Larionov, Slava Kozlov, Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov, who later lost his hockey career to a car accident—were so pivotal in bringing the Stanley Cup to the Detroit Red Wings in 1997.

  Today, a dozen years later, the three finalists for hockey’s main individual trophy, the Hart, are all Russian: Ovechkin, Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin and Pavel Datsyuk of the Detroit Red Wings. Ovechkin already won the Rocket Richard Trophy as leading goal scorer and Malkin took the Art Ross Trophy as the leading point getter. Datsyuk is also up for the Selke Trophy as the league’s best checker and the Lady Byng as the league’s most gentlemanly player. Most astonishing of all, however, may be that Russian Alex Kovalev of the Montreal Canadiens is one of the three finalists for the league award that goes to the most community-minded player. Robots no more.

  In fact, if you had to look for a comparison for the obvious passion that Ovechkin is showing these playoffs, you could do no better than … Bobby Clarke. The hockey world has changed that dramatically.

  Alexander Ovechkin continued to dazzle the next season, claiming the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player and winning the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal scorer, with 56 goals. His team, however, failed to advance in the playoffs, falling to the upstart Montreal Canadiens. Nor did Russia fare well at the 2010 Olympics, despite predictions that they would battle for the gold medal with Ovechkin leading. His ability to win began to be questioned and the 2010–11 NHL season saw a dramatic change in both Ovechkin, now captain, and the Washington Capitals as they changed their style of play from creative attack to responsible defence. The change of style produced no playoff success, as the talented Capitals stumbled once again.

  THE THIRD EYE: DANIEL AND HENRIK SEDIN

  (The Globe and Mail, February 5, 2010)

  OTTAWA, ONTARIO

  No one, not even the twins themselves, quite understands how it works—just that it usually does. Perhaps like swallows and certain other flocking birds, they have figured out how to communicate with their wings. Perhaps it is as Gordie Howe once said of a young Gretzky: “I sometimes think if you part Wayne’s hair, you’ll find another eye.”

  They are Henrik and Daniel Sedin, the identical twins of the Vancouver Canucks, two players who most nights appear to have taken hockey’s dreaded “blind pass” to visionary heights. Henrik doesn’t look as he whips a back pass to the tape of Daniel’s stick; Daniel doesn’t look as he drops a back pass to his brother Henrik, perfectly in position to rip a puck past a startled goaltender.

  A year ago, this description would have ended up with Daniel shooting the puck and scoring—Henrik preferred to pass and let his younger brother, by six minutes, take the glory—but then Daniel got hurt for a while last fall and Henrik had to do it all, and did it. Heading into last evening’s game in Ottawa—which the streaking Senators won 3–1 for their eleventh successive victory—Henrik stood as the leading scorer in the NHL with 25 goals and 53 assists for 78 points.

  His name stood ahead of Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, endlessly described as the two best players in the game today. Could he have possibly seen this coming when the season began? “No,” Henrik laughs, “I don’t think so.”

  But then, who saw anything coming this strange hockey season? Those writing the Ottawa Senators off in January found themselves calling the talk shows to apologize and celebrate the stunning play recently of backup goaltender Brian Elliott. Those who claimed the Vancouver Canucks were but a one-tune team—Roberto Luongo in goal—found themselves singing the praises of the twenty-nine-year-old Sedins.

  In fact, it is possible that the Canucks and the Senators—with Montreal and Calgary riding that final playoff spot bubble—might be the only two Canadian teams come the post-season. Ottawa was the better team this night when Vancouver elected to start Luongo’s backup Andrew Raycroft in net, but both teams now stand at a comfortable 70 points. That the Canucks lead the Northwest Division is only partly because of Luongo. The Sedin line, with Alex Burrows on right wing, Henrik at centre and Daniel at left, has slowly blossomed into the best line in the NHL. And it happened by accident.

  The Sedins always played well together. While Henrik jokes that it is by “guessing” that they seem always able to find each other, the more likely reason is that they have simply played together from the first moment they skated back in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden. The longest they have ever been apart was when Daniel missed eighteen games with a broken foot earlier in the season. “He goes to where he knows I can find him,” says Henrik of his brother.

  “You can’t teach what they’re doing,” says Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault. “They’ve been playing together for so long.”

  Together, yes, but not always with the right person. The twins had gone through as many partners as Tiger Woods, the line working well with Anson Carter until Carter decided he was worth more than he was, then a long series of right wingers were tried with limited success—until they turned to Alex Burrows.

  “It wasn’t a great coaching decision,” Vigneault says. “We were going through a rough stretch and we just said, ‘Why not try Burrows?’ ”

  They play differently than any other line in the game, endlessly churning the puck around the corners until one can break out or they find a seam opening to allow a pass and one-timer.

  Ottawa captain Daniel A
lfredsson—a Swede and a right winger who could possibly find himself playing with the Sedins during the Olympics—thinks he knows how it works. And how it sometimes falls short, as on this night when Alfredsson set up all Ottawa goals by Jason Spezza, Milan Michalek and Chris Kelly, while only Kyle Wellwood could score for Vancouver.

  “They toy with you in the sense that they play with the puck with such composure,” Alfredsson says. “They find each other. They play on the outside, kind of just drag you away from the net and then they find an opening. It’s hard to play against, especially now that you can’t hook and hold … They’re so good at protecting the puck, it’s tough to get at them … You don’t see them ’cause they don’t have that much speed—they won’t burn you wide. Their deceptiveness and vision of the ice is as good as anybody.”

  On most nights, as if each had a third eye.

  Henrik Sedin went on to win the scoring championship that year. The following season, Daniel Sedin won the scoring championship. They became the first brothers in NHL history to win back-to-back Art Ross trophies. The Vancouver Canucks, with the Sedins at the top of their game, won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2011 as the top team in the entire league. The brothers faltered, however, in the final two rounds of the playoffs, and watched their Canucks lose the Cup to the Boston Bruins in seven games.

  QUICK COMING OF AGE: DREW DOUGHTY

  (The Globe and Mail, November 23, 2010)

  OTTAWA, ONTARIO

  They are such a study in contrast.