Crosby goes from zero to hero with one shot; Until Sid the Kid scored The Goal, his overall Olympic performance was mostly forgettable

BYLINE: Jack Todd
SOURCE: For Canwest News Service


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MONTREAL

Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good. Case in point: Sidney Crosby.

Before you get your tweets all heated up, Crosby is obviously pretty good. He might even be the second-best hockey player on the planet.

If not for a healthy dose of luck, however, Crosby might be wearing an uncomfortable collar today, tagged as another Joe Thornton, a guy who does a five-ring vanishing act each time he gets near the Olympics.

How close was it? Close enough that Crosby ought to ship a case of 1967 Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes to Zach Parise with a nice note, thanking the New Jersey Devils sniper for tying that U.S.-Canada gold-medal tussle late in the third period, setting the stage for Crosby to rescue his reputation.

Everyone will remember Crosby as the hero of the Vancouver Olympics, when in truth he did not have a particularly good tournament. Canada's best forward, in fact, was Chicago's Jonathan Toews, who at 21 is a year younger than Crosby. It was Toews who got Canada on the board against the U.S. and it was Toews who would be remembered as the hero, had Parise not sent the game into overtime.

Before that, Crosby's only real highlight came in the elimination round against Switzerland, when he also had no points -- but scored the winner in the shootout. But when the medal round began, Crosby all but vanished, with no points in nine periods against Russia, Slovakia and the U.S., including regulation time in the final.

With Canada up 2-1 going into the final minute against the Americans, 16 million Canadians watching from coast to coast, this country could almost taste that gold medal. Our boys had it all but in the bag. Then, with 25 seconds to play, Parise tied it, making him the best friend Crosby ever had.

Without Parise's goal, much of the talk would have been about how all the pre-tournament hype had Crosby facing the Russians and Americans all by himself, but he failed to show.

Then Parise scored. They went to overtime and with one quick, accurate wrist shot, Crosby went from star to legend. Now, he's Paul Henderson with superstar credentials. Like we said up top: sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

And speaking of Henderson: The silliest thing to come out of the Vancouver Olympics had to be the statement, repeated in a dozen different media outlets, that the gold-medal match was the biggest hockey game ever played.

That is the purest horse hockey. Olympic gold is big under any circumstances, but the Olympic tournament doesn't begin to compare with the 1972 Summit Series or even the New Year's Eve game between the Montreal Canadiens and Red Army.

Those games pitted one system against another at the height of the Cold War. They were, in every sense, war by other means. People felt that our way of life was at stake.

When the Soviets came close to taking the Summit Series, it triggered a level of hysteria never seen in this country, before or since. The sense of relief when Yvan Cournoyer and Henderson rescued our reputation in the teeth of a hostile crowd is without parallel, as indeed was that entire series.

In Vancouver, you had two groups of union brothers and teammates going up against each other. Canada's GM and coach came from the Detroit Red Wings, the coach and GM of the U.S. team from the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Rivalry? Yes. A great win for Canada? Yes. The most important game in history? Not even close.

Go ahead and light those cigars: The hockey rivalry between the U.S. and Canada is much more intense when the women play.

So why do Canada's women get ripped for a private, on-ice celebration featuring champagne and cigars? Pure, unadulterated sexism, folks. If NHL players choose to celebrate with champagne and cigars, no one breathes a word. When the women do it, a Toronto paper decides it's worth a two-page spread.

It's a sexist world. If it wasn't, Hayley Wickenheiser would be as famous (and as rich) as Crosby.

- Best performance of the Games? My three heroes of the Olympic Games are all women who won bronze medals: Joannie Rochette and Clara Hughes of Canada and Slovenia's Petra Majdic.

Rochette and Hughes you know about. But it was Majdic who turned in one of the great performances in Olympic history.

During the warm-up for the cross-country sprint event, the Slovenian skier tumbled into a gully that should have been roped off, another of those instances of callous disregard for athlete safety of which the Vancouver organizers were conspicuously guilty, tragically so in the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Majdic suffered five broken ribs and a punctured lung, but somehow came back to ski the preliminary, quarter-final, semifinal and final, winning a bronze medal while suffering almost indescribable pain.

Majdic, not Crosby, deserves to remembered as the true hero of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

- Finally, Own the Podium has to go. Not the program, necessarily, but the obnoxious name and much that goes with it, including the un-Canadian policy of denying visiting athletes access to our practice facilities and preventing Canadians from training with athletes from competing nations.

Own the Podium smacks of American boasting and Nikestyle exclusion. Second place is the first loser and all that.

A better name? Go for Gold. That's what Canada did in Vancouver, with splendid success.

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quote:

Originally posted by Ravemontreal Once I took a piss in front of everybody at Stereo. Put the garbage under the mixer, and did it right there while people were dancing and screaming. people thought I was playing with the mixer but I was playing with my zizi.

quote:

Originally posted by Enjoy a classic from the aria days: me: are you on TA? girl: uhhhh... im on speed

I don't think Crosby had a bad Olympics, sure he didn't have the point output but if you watched him in the games he created chances and was one of our best defensive forwards? No?

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Marco V is the MAN!!!!!

Jack Todd is such an idiot...his son an even bigger one.

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Le Freak - Funk for Cows (pure fat bitch haus..click and free wet naps.)

quote:

So why do Canada's women get ripped

They didn´t. The news was put out into the public forum, and the vast majority laughed at their amusing antics.

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for a private, on-ice celebration featuring champagne and cigars?

How private could it possibly have been if reporters in the media were able to take photos and then publish stories in the local newspaper all about the celebration?

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Pure, unadulterated sexism, folks. If NHL players choose to celebrate with champagne and cigars, no one breathes a word. When the women do it, a Toronto paper decides it's worth a two-page spread.

If the men had partied with champaigne and cigars out on the hockey rink, in front of reporters, we WOULD hear about it. The men, like the women would have to apologize, and the public, as with the story about the women, would have laughed it off as childish antics of celebration by the men.

Fuck, this guy is annoying. The only thing worse than a feminist is a male feminist.

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Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, Heart???
These forces are supposed to combine to create Captain Planet?
Bullshit.
Those forces combine to create a soaking, boiling mudstorm on Valentine's Day.

Not very familiar with his body of work.

However, with this article he's bang-on about Crosby, imo. And as for the '72 series, it's a gutsy thing he wrote but he backed it up well, in any case.

As for the broads, well, one of them is underage

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quote:

Originally posted by Ravemontreal Once I took a piss in front of everybody at Stereo. Put the garbage under the mixer, and did it right there while people were dancing and screaming. people thought I was playing with the mixer but I was playing with my zizi.

quote:

Originally posted by Enjoy a classic from the aria days: me: are you on TA? girl: uhhhh... im on speed

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Originally posted by Spin Laden As for the broads, well, one of them is underage

Legal in her province, BC sucks like Ontario. That's what Booth, Portage and Alexandra was for in Ottawa.

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Short time TA, Long time Guver, Good time giver.

quote:

Originally posted by Spin Laden Crosby goes from zero to hero with one shot; Until Sid the Kid scored The Goal, his overall Olympic performance was mostly forgettable BYLINE: Jack Todd SOURCE: For Canwest News Service

wow. What a well written article. I think I agree with every single point made. Great read.

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I don't see the point in pointing out Crosby as the hero of the tournament. Maybe the game, but for the most part it its a team effort. If he didn't score the whole tournament or even earn an assist, then getting that winning overtime goal i can argue that. but he did contribute on many ways off the score sheet.

anyone could have been the hero, and it was just crosby was co-incidentally that person who won it. if it was richards or bergeron who scored, people would say the same thing. why did yzerman choose either of those two? ohh and look one of them scored the overtime goal. more or less the same situation no?

it was supposed to be crosby that scored, unfortunately you can't argue with that. so there it is. canada wins and yet people are still dissatisfied with the way we won or the way the final goal was scored.


one of my co workers was arguing with me that they should have gone with jeff carter instead of getzlaf. i dont see the point in this because we won the gold medal. everyone had a job to do and it was done in a way where were won. no matter who was on the ice, or on the bench, or if fleury played 1 or 2 games, we still won the gold. if another person was chosen to be on the team then the outcome could have been very well different. we could have lost with carter or could have won.

if it was anyone else on the team that was in the position crosby was in, then maybe they would have thought top shelf, then missed. then we could have had a whole other outcome.

i guess my point is that, we won.... leave at that, crosby is the hero and lets just ride with that because thats the way the story goes. if it was any other outcome we'd be sitting here complaining that we lost in a shootout..... which would be devastating enough.

I think it just goes to show how one finishes is more important than how one starts, whether we are talking about the 2010 Games in Van, Canada's medal performances, or even Crosby himself.

One can apply that to pretty much anything in life.

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quote:

Originally posted by Ravemontreal Once I took a piss in front of everybody at Stereo. Put the garbage under the mixer, and did it right there while people were dancing and screaming. people thought I was playing with the mixer but I was playing with my zizi.

quote:

Originally posted by Enjoy a classic from the aria days: me: are you on TA? girl: uhhhh... im on speed

Yes..... But if we lost then we'd be talking about how good of a start we had and the road to gold.

I just think that the article has to point out how we won, like it was the author who wanted someone else to score that goal.

People just can't seem to be happy with what they have in this situation.

I liked most of what he wrote because it was against the grain of all the other stuff out there, but well supported too. A few of us mentioned the same thing in this thread about Crosby's play.

Funny how things can change on a dime with a lucky bounce here or there in sports, and that's what Todd was implying in his comments about Sid.

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quote:

Originally posted by Ravemontreal Once I took a piss in front of everybody at Stereo. Put the garbage under the mixer, and did it right there while people were dancing and screaming. people thought I was playing with the mixer but I was playing with my zizi.

quote:

Originally posted by Enjoy a classic from the aria days: me: are you on TA? girl: uhhhh... im on speed