PITTSBURGH — Covering Stanley Cup Final games in person is delightful. It's a privilege. It's a thrill. But, and this is not remotely meant as a complaint, there are necessary give-backs that come from being in the building.
One of them: You miss certain things that happen on a screen, like this isolated shot of Sidney Crosby early in Game 2's overtime.
Actually, it wasn't early in overtime. It was late; Crosby was setting up the Penguins' game-winning goal. They went up 2-0 on the Sharks by executing exactly what Crosby told them to execute — he won the face-off back to Kris Letang, who found Conor Sheary, and Sheary beat San Jose goalie Martin Jones.
MORE: The 10 greatest moments of Crosby's career | Classic Crosby photos
“I call 25 faceoffs a game so I got 24 wrong tonight,” Crosby said. Can't all be winners. That one was, though.
“It’s one of those things — guys have to execute, you have to make the pass. That’s exactly what they did. Usually the center kind of calls the play, and I think those guys deserve a lot more credit than me.”
Sure. They deserve credit for bringing the plan to execution; Letang and Sheary are skillful players, and none of it happens without them (or Patric Hornqvist's screen, for that matter). But they don't deserve more credit than Crosby. Crosby, as has so often been the case, deserves the most.
"He says he's going to win it to me, not going to win it to (Brian Dumoulin), meaning it's going to me," Letang said. "He's an elite player, he believes in himself, he's confident, so that doesn't surprise me."
Sheary, an undrafted rookie out of UMass with goals in both Final games, said Crosby told him to line up along the wall.
MORE: Sidney Crosby finally scored, so everyone can shut up now
"We hadn't really done that before," Sheary said. "He said he's going to wing it back and Tanger is going to find me in the soft area there."
And that's what happened. Crosby cleanly beat Joel Ward back, and that was that. Really, it's barely about faceoffs. Faceoffs, large as they loom in postseason overtimes, are a relatively small part of the game. They tend to get too much attention.
The issue is more that Crosby is good at them like he's good at nearly everything. He's enormously skilled, and enormously dedicated, and that gives way to stuff like this. It was easy to joke on Tuesday about the attention paid to Crosby choosing to practice on Pittsburgh's optional day — there was practice play-by-play of The Captain, never taking a day off, working on his skill, serving as the example, blah blah blah blah.
In hindsight, though, it seems a little less funny. Thirty-six hours later, he was spearheading a line that dominated the run of play — he was on the ice for 30 Pittsburgh shot attempts and 15 by San Jose — and, eventually, putting his team two wins away from a Stanley Cup. The extra work is instructive.
"Sid, when you look at him, when he came into the league he was seen as a playmaker," Letang said. "After that he worked on his shot and he was a 50-goal scorer. After that he worked on his draws and now he's over 50-something percent on faceoffs. He works on every detail and that's why we're a successful team."
Part of that detail work: Knowing how and when to ... time it right, let's say.
Sharks center Logan Couture didn't bother with the euphemisms. Crosby wins draws so cleanly because "he cheats and he gets away with it," Couture said. "He's Sidney Crosby."
Asked to explain what he meant, Couture couldn't, really: "He times them and they don't kick him out for some reason, probably because of who he is."
MORE: Penguins' survival no longer depends on Malkin, Crosby
Right. You're supposed to time it. If Crosby gets kicked out of the dot a few times in Game 3, Couture's gambit will have worked, but good luck finding anything illegal about that last one. And no matter what, the guys who are best at face offs also tend to be the best at a) cheating and b) hiding the fact that they're cheating. It's a skill. Can't knock the hustle.
Down the hall, coach Mike Sullivan was calling Crosby "a horse out there." He also called him "inspiring." Got it — Sidney Crosby is an inspiring horse. He's ... Secretariat, maybe? Secretariat inspired people, right?
"He's a threat every time he's on the ice," Sullivan said. "He's playing the game the right way. He plays a complete game, the full sheet. He wins faceoffs. He's great on the puck battles. He can defend. When he plays against the opponent's top players, he has the ability to score goals or create that offensive threat and force them to have to defend.
"I know our players recognize the effort that he's putting in. You can see it in his body language. He's excited about this opportunity that we have. He's trying to make the most of it. He's doing everything in his power to help this team win right now."
Including some light coaching, it seems. And maybe some cheating.