Occasionally Wright

Sid the Kid

There's been some anti-Crosby backlash in some hockey markets and some people would like to think he's not a nice kid. Given the amount of pressure he's under and how much he time he spends dealing with the media and fans I think he's remarkably patient and extremely well grounded.

With the Penguins in town to play the Thrashers I had a chance to talk to him for a few seconds today and I told him a family friend from home wanted me to say hi to him on his behalf. As soon as I said the friend's name Sidney Crosby knew exactly who I was talking about. The kid meets thousands of people every year but without even mentioning the context of when he had met the friend of the family he knew who I meant.

"Sidney Smith wanted me to say hi to you for him."
"Yeah! Sid from PEI. Say hi to him back."

There was nothing fake about. He remembered golfing with Sid Smith at Brad Richards' charity tournament last summer.

I'd be fine with Crosby being held pointless tonight, but it's tough not to root for a kid like that. It's little wonder that he's leading the Eastern Conference in All-Star voting (Vote Hossa!).

Sidney Crosby Features

CBC Nova Scotia has 2 good video pieces on "The Next One" Sidney Crosby. One is a background piece while the other has a short interview with his father and focuses on Crosby's first game in Halifax as a member of the Rimouski Oceanic. Both of them are available in Real Player format here.

**UPDATE**

This page has become the #1 result in Google for 'Sidney Crosby' so I'm going to do what I can to help everyone out by posting whatever links I know of that you might find useful.

If you're looking for Sidney Crosby's lacrosse-like goal that's being talked about all over the place, it can be seen in the Coach's Corner archives for Nov 29.

Cherry defends his comments on the December 6 episode of Coach's Corner so you might want to watch that too.

The goal is also available on TSN.ca as one of 10 options for play of the year. You need to sign up to watch the clip and vote but it's free and easy. Personally I'll take Maxim Afinogenov's goal over Crosby's any day. Crosby's was impressive for a 16 yr old but it's been done before. Maxim's goal was insane. Watch them here.

Crosby plays for the Rimouski Oceanic. As far as I can tell the team site is only available in French but if you want to see individual player stats for the Oceanic they're available on this page. Just click on Saison 2003-2004 under 'Joueurs par équipe.' It will open a new window which will automatically go to Rimouski player stats. If you want league scoring it's available under 'Joueurs LHJMQ' on the same page.

The site for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) in which Crosby plays is available in French and English here. They have lots of stuff including a player database. They list crosby as a centre, wearing #87. He's also listed as being born 1987-08-07, he's 5'10" 175 lbs, shoots left and was born in Halifax, nova Scotia. His family lives in Cole Harbour outside of Halifax.

All of the QMJHL Players of the Week are listed here and Players of the Month here.

The QMJHL is also part of the CHL which also includes the Western Hockey League and the Ontario Hockey League. Links for all of them can be found here.

Slam! Hockey has a Canadian Press article on Crosby's progress at the Canadian National junior team camp (posted Dec 12).

If you have any more links you'd care to share feel free to post them. There's a bit of discussion about Don Cherry's comments under another post on this site if you want to chime in. Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully you found what you were looking for. If not ask and I'll try to find it for you.

**UPDATE Feb 25, 2004**

All my sports related posts are now over at my other site, The Net Files, including an article on Rimouski's threats to not dress Crosby for their road trip.