He ain't all that

As I said in a comment earlier, we would've done a playoff preview thing, but those of us contributing to the hockey posts were all ill last week, so it didn't happen. Here's some random thoughts on the Sens-Pens series.

At nhl.com, you can read all about how Sidney Crosby was "stupendous" and "magnificent", saving a goal and brilliantly setting up Letang's game-winner.

Then again, if you actually watched the game, you might have missed all the stupendousness and magnificence. What Crosby actually did on the game-winner was skate back and forth behind the Ottawa net and then pass to the point. I mean, how stupendously magnificent is that? For what it's worth, contrary to what's being reported, he didn't save a goal, either; the puck he batted away from the goal-line had already stopped. All in all, the Pens played a miserably bad game. You won't read that in the media, though; instead you'll read about how brilliant Crosby is.

I know I'm completely biased about Crosby, because I just can't like the guy one bit. The fact is, though, that he's an interesting study in how we create stories in sports. There is so much effort being put into portraying Crosby as the greatest hockey player ever that even in a fairly lackluster, very even game where no-one really stood out, we get headlines that scream CROSBY CROSBY CROSBY. If Pascal Dupuis had 1+1 and "saved a goal", you'd actually get to read about the game. But when it's the anointed messiah of hockey, this is what happens.

The Penguins won largely because the Senators only have one line that's capable of generating any kind of offense at all, and it's the third line. Jason Spezza has been so bad that I think Cory Clouston should bench him. He doesn't look like he even cares.

I hate to talk about the referees, but I have to. On CBC, Don Cherry showed Max Talbot's two dives in the first period, both of which were an Ottawa penalty. They were disgusting, sure, but what's really disgusting is that the refs fell for it. I went on and on about this last year, but now I feel justified, because it's happening again. Watch any playoff game where the Penguins are doing badly. In the third period, the refs are going to start calling soft penalties on the other team. It happened in both games of the Ottawa series, just like it happened in last year's Caps series. I find it astonishing, but it keeps happening.

Perhaps they're just skilled at playing the refs. In every NHL playoff game I've seen, the losing team pretty much immediately leaves the ice. Not so in Game 1, where Crosby inexplicably skated over to the referees to bitch at them instead of heading off the ice. I don't recall ever seeing that before.

In general, I find the refereeing in these playoffs to be really confusing: mostly they're letting everything go, but in almost every game they occasionally call penalties that I would consider soft in a regular season game, let alone in the playoffs. It's just that in the Pens games, they're all going Pittsburgh's way.

As an aside, I was positively shocked that Andy Sutton didn't get a penalty for his hit on Jordan Leopold. I thought it was the right call, which is why I was so shocked.

This time the referee bias is hardly likely to matter at all. Unless Ottawa suddenly finds scoring, and it doesn't seem likely, the Pens will take it in six. The Senators just can't score, and the fact that they couldn't put the Penguins away in Game 2 probably lost them the series.

Finally, we learned last night on CBC that they're now calling Crosby's combination of a "save", goal and assist a "Sidney Crosby hat trick" in Pittsburgh. That's a little disingenuous, as this is the only time he's had one of those, and like I said, he didn't actually save a goal. So we'd like to suggest a more realistic Sidney Crosby hat trick:

- a retaliatory slash to the leg of a player who hit him
- a second assist
- viewer's choice: either diving (vintage) or crying to the referees (playoffs)

Whichever one you go with, he's had plenty of them.