The Spectacular Ice-Breaker

 

Review by Mike Gange

 

The Rookie: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL

By Shawna Richer

McClelland & Stewart, $29.99, 316 pages

Even before he hit the ice in the National Hockey League, Sidney Crosby was being hyped as the next big thing. He broke into the NHL as an 18 year-old, chosen by the Pittsburgh Penguins as the first over-all draft choice in the summer of 2005. “Sid the Kid” was a-lad-among- men, and the talented playmaker and scoring whiz was expected to bring fans back to NHL hockey after a year-long labour dispute that hockey fans everywhere found distasteful. In his rookie season, Crosby recorded more than 100 points, and was an “aw-shucks” kind of superhero. Clearly, Crosby can hold his own, both on the ice and off, says Shawna Richer in her book, The Rookie: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL.

I met Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Shawna Richer when she was covering the Canadian University Men’s Hockey finals. She too is an “aw-shucks” kind of person, low keyed, soft spoken, very intelligent and observant. She is also a fantastic writer. Richer lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, not too far away from Sydney Crosby’s family home in Cole Harbour, N.S. In December 2004, when Crosby played for Team Canada during the World Junior Tournament in North Dakota, Richer spent a lot of time with Crosby’s parents, Troy and Tina, writing features on the-then 17-year old hockey ‘phenom.’  After Crosby was drafted, Richer convinced the Globe and Mail to assign her to Pittsburgh to follow the Penguins and to chronicle how Crosby would do in his first year in the NHL. She talked with Crosby nearly every day during the season, traveling with the Penguins and writing her Globe and Mail column somewhere between early morning hockey practices and evening games. Her book is an extension of her observations of Sid-the-Kid throughout his rookie season in the NHL.

Crosby, writes Richer, had a wild year of initiation into the National Hockey League. Although he would become the youngest player to score 100 points, his Pittsburgh Penguins team won only 22 games all year, and were virtually eliminated from the playoff race by Christmas. During that year, the Penguins fired head coach Eddie Olyczyk, and brought in Michel Therrien. Legendary player and team owner Mario Lemieux announced his retirement as a player and shortly after, decided to put the team up for sale. During one rough and tumble game against the Philadelphia Flyers in November 2005, Crosby lost his two front teeth when rugged defenseman Darrian Hatcher cross-checked him in the mouth. The referees said they did not see the infraction so no penalty was called, and when Crosby complained, the Flyers coaches and players started calling Crosby a whiner and a player who would dive to draw a penalty. Even Don Cherry picked up this rant, and repeated it several times on his Hockey Night in Canada intermission segment, “Coach’s Corner.”

In Toronto, enamoured fans encircled Crosby so he had to sign hundreds of autographs before he could make his way to the team bus. In Montreal, fans were so crazed for any kind of contact with the young star that he and his parents had to hide in a hotel room and order meals from room service, while the team ate in restaurants. Because he played his junior hockey in Rimouski, Quebec, Crosby made every effort to learn to speak French, and he gives interviews in either language, which further endeared him to fans.

Richer’s story is a fast read, but the book is filled with details that make the story much more compelling and credible. For example, when writing about the far-reaching impact of the NHL strike, she writes that in many cities, taverns laid-off bartenders and wait staff, and even the breweries recorded a drop in product sales and consumption; meanwhile the hockey puck factory lost $4million because of the strike. One of the reasons the book is exciting is because it gives readers a glimpse of the world behind closed doors of professional hockey teams. A little known fact realized by few fans is how, in most rinks, players dress and shower in one room, but come to an adjoining room for interviews with the media. Television, of course, would only show us the second room, but Richer gets into and writes about the other one – with the smelly shirts on the floor, used hockey tape in sticky piles, and the players padding around the room in their long underwear.  

No question, the best part of the book is the up-close details Richer provides about Crosby. He was the last one off the ice after practice, frequently the last one on the bus – held up by well wishers and autograph hounds. Crosby was a marvel on the ice, and helped those teams he and the Penguins visited to sell to capacity crowds, but he was such an innocent in life that for the first part of the season he kept his paycheques in a sock drawer because he did not know how to use a chequing account.  No question, Sidney Crosby is a hockey loving machine, and when he is not playing he is watching games on TV, or working out in the team weight room, or stretching. But Crosby also has a very real personal side too. Richer observed that as Mark Recchi was leaving the team because he was traded to Carolina at the trade deadline, Crosby wrote him a touching personal note wishing Recchi well and hoping to see him again. (Of course the two were re-united the following season, when Pittsburgh signed Recchi as a free agent.)  

If there is any part of Richer’s book that is disappointing, it comes at the close of the story. Readers will think there has to be more to this story. Alas, the rookie season only happens once. Thank goodness Shawn Richer was there to get those details.

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism courses at Fredericton High.