Sid Pics - 15/16 Season

By Dave Molinari / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It can, Sidney Crosby says, be traced directly to his father.

Well, not entirely.

Seems he can’t really absolve his mother, either.

Fact is, while Crosby can’t know for sure whether it’s genetic or a by-product of the environment in which he grew up, he’s convinced that his ultra-competitive
nature is a gift from the people who raised him.

“My dad is really competitive,” he said, smiling. “It was pretty clear whenever I would play games with them as a kid, and things like that. He always wanted to
win, but my mom was quietly competitive, too.

“What­ever we did, she wanted to win. Play­ing bas­ket­ball or vol­ley­ball, what­ever she did, she qui­etly … I could tell that she wanted to win, too.

“Whether it was my dad or my mom, com­pet­ing against each other in dif­fer­ent things … it was funny to see that.”

It’s un­der­stand­able, then, if op­po­nents Crosby tor­ments with his sled-dog te­nac­ity are tempted to mut­ter an un­pleas­ant thing or two about Troy Crosby. Or his wife, Trina.

Or, more likely, both.

No room for los­ing

It could be any team flight, go­ing any­where.

If the Pen­guins’ char­ter is in the air, chances are good that Crosby and goalie Marc-An­dre Fl­eury are pass­ing the time play­ing video games.

And that one of them re­ally, re­ally wants to come out on top.

“We al­ways sit with each other, and he has to win,” Fl­eury said. “At any­thing. Throw­ing a ball of tape at the gar­bage [can]. He wants to win that. And if he
doesn’t, he wants to play an­other game.”

Fl­eury joked that “some­times, it gets an­noy­ing,” and added that “in train­ing camp, I didn’t want to be on his team, so I could rob him and make him lose.”

Fl­eury was kid­ding – prob­a­bly – and learned long ago that he shouldn’t take Crosby’s fierce de­sire to win per­son­ally.

After all, it’s not only about video games or train­ing-camp scrim­mages or who can fling a wad­ded-up piece of tape most ac­cu­rately.

Put Crosby in any set­ting in which a score is kept or a win­ner can be de­ter­mined by any means, and he’ll re­spond the same way.

“He doesn’t like to lose … at any­thing, re­ally,” winger Beau Ben­nett said. “All the best play­ers re­ally have that in com­mon, that com­pet­i­tive edge. Not just in
hockey, but what­ever they do, they want to win.

“He gets com­pet­i­tive with golf, which is fun when you play it the right way. He loves that.

“Even when we have a three-on-three game and say his team is down or some­thing, we’ll take it from a best-of-three to a best-of-five.”

Crosby’s com­pet­i­tive fe­roc­ity can’t be quan­ti­fied, but prob­a­bly con­trib­utes as much to his on-ice ac­com­plish­ments as his ex­cep­tional hand skills, in­stincts
and con­di­tion­ing.

What’s more, team­mates say, his at­ti­tude can go vi­ral.

“In prac­tice, it makes me com­pete for ev­ery puck,” Fl­eury said. “It pushes ev­ery­body else in the room to play hard, in prac­tice or in games.”

Crosby said he isn’t sure pre­cisely when he re­al­ized the pas­sion to com­pete had con­sumed him, but vows that it’s not a trait he plans to shed.

“As you get older, you re­al­ize that some peo­ple shake stuff off a lit­tle eas­ier than oth­ers,” he said. “I just didn’t like to lose at all. I didn’t re­ally ac­cept that.

“I’m not say­ing that it’s not go­ing to hap­pen, but I’m def­i­nitely go­ing to do ev­ery­thing I can to avoid it.”

Al­ways chal­leng­ing

Crosby de­votes a lot of time to com­mu­nity and char­ity work, pub­li­cized and oth­er­wise, and some­times that pits him against chil­dren in any va­ri­ety of ath­letic events.

When he’s de­liv­er­ing sea­son tick­ets, it could lead to, say, a game of ball hockey in the fam­ily’s drive­way.

Crosby un­der­stands that it’s good form to let the kids do well – maybe even [gasp] win – and he com­plies, but he’s not en­tirely a soft touch in those set­tings.

“Even with kids, I like to chal­lenge them a bit,” he said.

“As a kid, I liked to be chal­lenged, too. Maybe that’s why I feel that way.

“Ev­ery­body’s dif­fer­ent, but I think I def­i­nitely … it’s not the eas­i­est thing to let that go, or to let some­body beat you.”

Crosby, who has had count­less epic bat­tles since en­ter­ing the NHL in 2005, sin­gles out Hall of Fame cen­ter Peter Fors­berg and Detroit’s Hen­rik Zet­ter­berg
as the two most com­pet­i­tive guys he has faced as a pro.

“It’s pretty feisty [play­ing against them],” he said. “At times, pretty in­tense. Those guys are guys you re­ally go head-to-head against [as a cen­ter], tak­ing face­offs.

“You see them all game, all over the ice. It’s not like a de­fen­se­man you might have a cou­ple of rushes against, or maybe you’re in the cor­ner with him the odd time.
You play the same po­si­tion, and you’re go­ing up against him ev­ery shift.”

Pre­dict­ably, Crosby ap­pre­ci­ates the way guys like Zet­ter­berg go all-in ev­ery time they hop over the boards.

He also says the sat­is­fac­tion that comes with suc­cess is en­hanced when he’s bat­tled an op­po­nent who’s fully com­mit­ted to best­ing him.

“I re­spect them, but I want to beat them,” he said. “At the end of the night, when you’re able to win a game like that, it’s def­i­nitely more re­ward­ing when the guy
across from you is com­pet­ing the way those guys do.

“It’s al­ways nice to win, but es­pe­cially when you’re go­ing up against guys who you know take pride in try­ing to beat you and re­ally want to shut you down, that’s
when it’s re­ward­ing.

“Guys who re­ally, ev­ery night, you know you’re go­ing to have to be at your best to beat them, as a player or as a team, that’s al­ways a great feel­ing when you’re
beat­ing an in­di­vid­ual or a team that has that men­tal­ity.”

Sounds as if Crosby should have a pretty good idea of what it’s like for the rest of the NHL to go against him.

Which just might be what Mom and Dad had in mind all along.

Dave Mo­li­nari: dmo­li­nari@post-ga­zette.com and Twit­ter @mo­li­nariPG.