Sidney Crosby cracked 1,000 career points the other night, and it prompted some reflection. What a player he has been. What a multifaceted, star-crossed, unappreciated genius of a hockey player. He is fifth all-time in points per game, trailing only Gretzky, Lemieux, Bossy and Orr, all of whom played in much more higher-scoring eras. Sidney Crosby is one of hockey’s all-time greatest players. It shouldn’t even be a debate.
Add kids like Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews and Patrick Laine and Mitch Marner, and primal forces like Brent Burns, and the other stars that hockey can trot out nowadays, and you realize something. In what is for everyone else a golden age of sports, the National Hockey League is being left out.
Because really, when have sports fans ever had it this good? The Super Bowl, for instance: man, that Super Bowl. The biggest-ever Super Bowl comeback was 10 points until Tom Brady and the Patriots rallied from 25 down to win in the second half.
But it wasn’t alone. Go back, say, 12 months, and what do you find? March Madness: Villanova and North Carolina exchanged a series of last-second shots, capped by a buzzer-beater by Villanova’s Kris Jenkins. The Masters: In the space on an hour Jordan Spieth collapsed and Danny Willett soared, in the best tradition of psychologically destructive golf. In English soccer, Leicester won the Premier League. They were a 5,000-to-1 longshot when the season began. Nothing like that had ever happened before in sports. Nothing.
The NBA final: LeBron James dragged his team back from a 3-1 deficit against a 73-win team in a series that went down to the final moments of Game 7. The World Series. I mean, come on. Before Game 7, after the Cubs had rallied from a 3-1 series deficit, people in Chicago wrote the names of their loved ones who had died before the Cubs could win in chalk, on the bricks outside Wrigley Field. Game 7 was . . . incredible. The Cubs blew a 5-2 lead, and a 6-3 lead, because Cleveland’s Rajai Davis hit an insane home run in the eighth, and they went to extra innings, and there was a rain delay, and damned if the Cubs didn’t win their first World Series since 1908, with Kris Bryant smiling as he collected and threw the ball that became the legendary final out. Phew.
The Grey Cup: An overtime classic, featuring a 40-year-old Henry Burris upsetting what might have been one or two of the greatest CFL teams of all time. The NCAA football championship? Clemson upset No. 1 Alabama 35-31 in a game for the ages. The world junior championships? U.S.-Canada in the final was a bonfire, and the only thing about the Americans’ 6-5 win that stunk was the shootout.
Oh, and tennis threw in a five-set Federer-Nadal final. Month after month, sports gave us championships and athletes and moments that you could only forget if they were crowded out of your brain by all the other unforgettable moments. What a 12 months.
And then there was the NHL. It’s been . . . OK?
“The most exciting finals I can remember in recent times is Chicago and Philly (in 2010), and the reason was, it was unpredictable,” says Ray Ferraro of TSN, who is one of the strongest voices for a more entertaining game. “The goaltending wasn’t very good, and there were lots of goals (47 in six games). As soon as there’s more goals, there’s more unpredictability to the game.
“The players are better and faster and stronger than they’ve ever been. But the leading scorer’s going to have 90 points this year. The leading scorer should have 120 points. A lot of games are — you ever play air hockey when you were a kid? The puck just kind of bounces around the table fast, and sometimes it accidentally goes in the net. That, many nights, is what the NHL can look like. It’s super-fast, and accidentally once or twice a night the puck goes into the net, and it’s 2-0, or 3-1.”
Scoring is actually up a little this year, to 2011 levels; save percentage has dropped from .915 to .912, which is where it was in 2013. It’s marginal improvement, and maybe goosed by some big-time blowouts, but it’s improvement. The goalie equipment will continue to be slimmed. The Leafs, among other teams, are helping.
“One of the reasons the Leafs are so exciting this year — what if they were really good, and they won every game 2-1?” says Ferraro. “It would be boring. But they win, and when they have a lead you’re not sure they can keep it. And then they score another one, and you go, this is fun.”
Ah, fun. You see it in 3-on-3 overtime, and in Team North America at the World Cup. A series like Pittsburgh-Philadelphia from 2012 can’t happen again, because that kind of rabid physicality has been diminished. But Pittsburgh-Washington from 2009, with stars playing like stars? Series like that stand out like diamonds.
Maybe the Cup final will feature Crosby again, and McDavid — OK, it won’t be McDavid. But maybe we get two teams with backup goalies, and the coaches accidentally get drunk, and it will be full of fireworks and scoring and indelible moments. Maybe, against all odds, this is the year. Lord knows, the game is due.
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