INTRODUCTION In the world of hockey Sidney Crosby ranks as one of the best players He is one of the most award winning of all time Even from the time he was a toddler Sid the Kid was a prodigy on ice At age thirty after having won the Stanley Cup three times his star is still shining bright Speed skill smarts strength Crosby has it all He was born with a natural ability to skate handle a stick and fire a puck into a net Crosby became the youngest National Hockey League NHL captain at that time at age nineteen and the youngest youngest to lead his team to a Stanley Cup title Crosby holds the record as the youngest player to reach two hundred career points and one hundred points in a single season The superstar joined the exclusive Triple Gold Club when he captured an Olympic gold medal and won gold in the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship IIHF He’s now in that group of top three four all-time greats Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford said in an interview on NHL com In 2010 the twenty-three-year-old Crosby was burning up the ice in a twenty-five-game point streak He tallied an incredible fifty-point run In his rookie season playing against the Phoenix Coyotes Crosby fell and still scored One of his most incredible goals came in 2017 with a one-handed backhanded backhanded score against the Buffalo Sabres Although his job is to play center and score goals Crosby does whatever it takes to win In the 2010 playoffs against the Ottawa Senators Crosby dove to block a puck making a critical save his team would go on to victory in the six-game series Like any athlete Crosby has had to battle through discouraging discouraging slumps as well For several years before 2016 4
INTRODUCTION 5 Sidney Crosby was one of the youngest captains in the National Hockey League On his jersey with the Pittsburgh Penguins he wears the number 87 for his birthday which is 8 7 1987
6 SIDNEY CROSBY Crosby and the Penguins seemed to be fading They just weren’t winning like they used to But grit determination and endless practice turned things around and brought them back to the Stanley Cup finals two years in a row The young athlete also has had to deal with crippling concussions concussions These head injuries caused him to miss forty-eight games in the 2010 2011 season and twenty games at the start of the 2011 2012 season Through it all Crosby has stayed humble modest and true to his hometown roots always returning to Cole Harbour Nova Scotia where he grew up and learned to master the sport The biggest thing for me is the passion that I’ve always had for hockey said Crosby I remember growing up no matter what I did in life my parents always told me to try to do my best at it and be my best I can say going through different things that that passion is the most important part It’s not skills or talent or any of that stuff
CHAPTER ONE A NATURAL-BORN SKATER If you go to the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame in Canada you’ll see a curious sight a clothes dryer riddled with black marks and dents That dryer has become a symbol of the hard work it takes to succeed in professional sports It once sat in Sidney Crosby’s family home When the hockey hero was growing up his parents Troy and Trina set up a makeshift hockey rink in their unfinished basement It was complete with lines painted on the floor and a hockey net Sidney spent endless hours there honing his slap shot His friends would come over too often on rainy days They would put on roller blades and practice practice practice When Sidney missed a shot however the Whirlpool would take the blow A loud clang would resound throughout the house Crosby said that his parents didn’t get upset as long as the dryer kept working As a top player in the National Hockey League at age eighteen Crosby was invited to appear on The Tonight Show For a gag the host Jay Leno asked Crosby to shoot pucks into a dryer Ironically many thought the appliance had served as his goal growing up but it really was the object that took the brunt of all his missed shots His parents also didn’t mind the dryer getting banged up because they were devoted hockey fans His mother has two brothers who 7
