| Scott Essman. 4th January, 2008 - 12:27 pm
 Just how good is the Penguins' star center, Sidney Crosby? Certainly, he has already made his mark on the NHL in less than three complete seasons and has simultaneously brought Pittsburgh out of the dormancy it has been in since Mario Lemieux left the game permanently two years ago.
Undoubtedly, he is the most hyped player to reach the NHL since Eric Lindros came into the league with the Flyers in 1991.
But how does Crosby stack up thus far? The clearest comparison is to Lemieux himself and less obviously to Wayne Gretzky. With just two full seasons behind him, it is both unfair and impossible to compare Crosby to either of those all-time greats, each of whom might be the greatest of their respective eras at any offensive position. But it does warrant a first look.
For one, Crosby is to date not the prolific goal scorer that 66 or 99 were early in their careers. However, goals are surely more difficult to come by as they were when Lemieux broke through in the mid-1980s and even more so than when Gretzky debuted in the late-1970s.
Crosby had 39 in his first season and 36 last year, with 16 in his first 39 games this year, which puts him on about the same pace as his first two seasons. Lemieux debuted with 43, 48 and 54 in his first three seasons with his highest output yet to come. Crosby will likely never match Super Mario's plateau of 85 goals achieved in 1989, but in this current defensively-oriented NHL environment, no player would be expected to near or exceed Lemeiux's raw statistics -- Mario finished with 690 goals in 17 seasons stretched across 21 years though five of those seasons were partially played at best.
Of course, Gretzky was a goal machine at the outset of his career. Inconceivably, The Great One never scored below 50 goals in his first eight seasons, and until he reached the age of 30, never scored below 40 in a year. His high mark in 1982 was 92 goals, an NHL record. With a record 894 total goals in his 21 years, his stats will likely never even be approximated.
In fairness, Crosby plays a wholly different style of game than either Lemieux or Gretzky. Mario, the hockey machine, stood a towering 6'5" and weighed an intimidating 230 in his playing days, while Wayne was a sleek 6'0", 180. Sidney is a shorter compact player, standing 5'11" and weighing 200.
Considering the ability to create assists, Crosby is superb, averaging about one per game; through his first 199 games he has 184 assists. It is this skill above goalscoring for which Crosby might be remembered best. Like Lemieux, who made 1033 assists in his 915 amazing games as a Penguin, and Gretzky, who got an astounding 1963 assists in 1487 games with four different teams, Crosby is headed into the direction of the great NHL playmakers of all time.
Certainly, the jury is still out on exactly what type of player Crosby will ultimately be and just what type of impact he will have as an offensive force and teammate.
His predecessor Lemieux led the Penguins to their first two Stanley Cups - consecutively in 1991 and 1992 - and numerous successes. And, famously, Gretzky led a loaded Edmonton Oilers' team to four Cups in five years in the 1980s and always made all of his teams infinitely better in the process.
But already, after a long drought in Pittsburgh, the Penguins are vastly improved. In Crosby's first season the team struggled, but he led them to a superior 2006-2007 season, including a January-April 2007 surge in which the team won 31 and only lost 9, including five overtimes. This put the Penguins in the playoffs where they lost in five games to the Senators, but it was a major step in recent franchise history. This season, Pittsburgh is a respectable 22-16-2, good enough for fifth place in the Eastern Conference to date. With the key part of the season remaining, time will tell if Crosby can lead them to elite status in 2008.
One footnote to Crosby's NHL status thus far: he just turned 20 last August. |
