Quote:
Originally Posted by JWK
I hated him when he first came into the league because of his diving and constant whining, now I just don't care.
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I put myself in his shoes. He's an extremely talented player who tore up the QMJHL with Rimouski, USHL with Shattuck, and the Nova Scotia Midget Major league with Dartmouth. The kid was unstoppable amongst competition like that.
An 18 year old who just went on a major scoring spree over the past four seasons with 287 goals, 371 assists, and 658 points in just 252 games has lofty expectations for himself especially considering the sports world has dubbed him "the next one".
So the Kid shows up to the NHL and his reputation precedes him. Pittsburgh is Crosby Capital, ESPN is talking about him, CBC is talking about him, hell even Jay Leno gets on the Crosby mayhem.
So Crosby is playing and he's playing his game and trying to do what he did for Rimouski, Shattuck, and Dartmouth... but what's this? His competition isn't 14-21 year old kids anymore... it's a league of big, strong, hardworking men who have eons of experience under their belt.
Crosby is a smart player, in the juniors and under he would exploit people's inability to understand the game at a mature level. He used his incredible hockey sense to just destroy players in the juniors.
Now he is ****ing frustrated as hell. After playing 252 games where he was God essentially, Crosby can't deal with the fact that there's a 30 year old 6'6" 215 lb defender who has seen that deke 30 times last season and knows how to shut Sid down.
So what do 18 year old guys do? They become drama queens. Yeah he dove, yeah he complained, but he just wasn't used to that kind of pressure. Crosby comes off as a spoiled *****. I love the guy to death, one of my favorite players, we share a birthday, I have a bunch of Crosby memorabilia, hell my lauded avatar is dedicated to him. But he really came off as a kid who has had everything so easily handed to him that he would throw fits when someone would shut him down because in his mind that just wasn't supposed to happen.
Luckily seasons of maturity have helped him. I think the humbling defeat in 2008 to the Detroit Redwings in the Stanley Cup gave Crosby a new fire and instead of pretending challenges for himself shouldn't exist, he accepted those challenges and emerged as possibly the most dominant player to touch the league (including Gretzky and Lemieux taken in context of when they played).
I love Crosby. He's grown so much as a person and as a player. We've seen the kid grow up... He's gone from
This to this:
Kid has gone from a boy to a man and has left behind his stupid, childish drama.
I for one love what Sid brings to the game, and everybody who considers themselves a fan of hockey should at least respect the player.
, nashville 6 goals on 24 shots. 
