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fter all this time, Sidney Crosby still seems to be something of an enigma. He’s been so dominant, so excellent, so stoic, for so long, it can be difficult to see the man beneath the myth. For certain generations, he simply is the game — as foundational to hockey as white ice lined blue and red. He’s history incarnate.
But Kris Letang knows the man. He’s been there from the beginning, witnessed every step of the journey in Pittsburgh, and might understand No. 87 better than anyone who’s ever skated alongside him. When the defender considers who Crosby is, truly, he thinks back to their run to the Stanley Cup summit in the spring of 2016, of all the captain did behind the scenes, away from the cameras, to get them there.
It had taken seven years for the Penguins to claw their way back to the mountaintop. After a five-game first-round battle with the rival New York Rangers, they’d navigated a hard-fought six-game series with the Washington Capitals, led by No. 87’s old foe, Alex Ovechkin. More than a few times, it nearly went sideways. But Crosby kept them pointed forward, kept his hands on the tiller.
“On the bench, he has a calming effect; on the ice, also. Between periods, between games, he’s trying to understand everybody’s needs,” Letang says. “You know, everybody is different. It’s always hard to know what a team needs, because there’s so many individuals. But Sid will sit down and try to understand those things and make the right decisions for his teammates. He’ll sit down with different guys at different moments, if they’re not having a good series or a good game, and he’ll work with those guys.”