The Kid, we no doubt all agree, is good. No, make that great. So,
about the only questions left are how much better can he get and what
is he hoping for next?

SCOTT MORRISON

The answer to the first remains to be played out, the answer to the
second we can all pretty much guess. "We are all hungry to take the
next step," Sidney Crosby says. "And I haven't won a Stanley Cup."

Now you have your answers.

Two years into his professional career, Crosby has lived up to the
hype and the expectations and perhaps even exceeded both. After
scoring 102 points in his rookie season, he was even better in his
second. He finished with 120 points to win the scoring title, all the
while helping his team improve by 47 points - the fourth biggest
turnaround in National Hockey League history - and return to the
playoffs for the first time since 2001. He was named a First Team
All-Star and, in addition to winning the Art Ross Trophy for scoring,
he also won the Hart Trophy, as most valuable player as selected by
the media, and the Lester B. Pearson award, as the MVP as selected by
his peers.
Now the perspective. He became the youngest player (at 19 years, eight
months, younger even than Crosby admirer Wayne Gretzky was when he won
his first a few months past his 20th birthday) to reach 200 points. He
is the youngest player – in any professional sport - to win a scoring
title. After the season, he became the youngest player to ever be
named a full-time captain. He also is one of just five players to
record 100 points in each of their first two seasons in the NHL. Last
season, the Pittsburgh Penguins were 41-10-9 in games in which he
earned a point, 6-13-0 in games he didn't. In fact, it is likely there
would no longer even be a team in Pittsburgh, with a new arena in the
works, if not for Crosby.

All that accomplished before his 20th birthday, which makes one wonder
just how much better can the future get because the present is already
pretty darn good.
Of all the big money spent in a curious off-season, one that left many
believing the past two post-lockout years were a black hole and
nothing had really changed in the NHL, the best money spent likely was
the five-year, $43.5 million extension the Penguins gave Crosby, who
still had one year remaining on his first contract. Talk about a
blue-chip investment for at least six more years.

Indeed, over the summer the Penguins improved for both the present and
the future.They got better on defence by signing Darryl Sydor from
Dallas and also re-signed veteran forwards Gary Roberts and Mark
Recchi. They added another scoring alternative in Petr Sykora, which
will force teams to rethink how they defend Crosby.
Crosby even accepted a little less salary to leave room for the team
to sign that additional help and keep the core group of youngsters
together. On the heels of the kind of summer the Buffalo Sabres had,
for instance, losing two of their best players for economic reasons,
that could be significant.
"I really think with the group we have there's going to be a lot of
guys who aren't looking elsewhere depending on the money and things
like that, so we'll see what happens," Crosby says.

As a result of both his and the team's success this past season, the
dynamic has changed. Crosby has shown what his hard work,
determination, feistiness and immense skill can do.The team also
climbed to another level, thus the expectations for both grow, knowing
the expectations for the team can't be fulfilled without The Kid
meeting his.
"It doesn't really feel a whole lot different," he says of the
pressure. "I think I put so much pressure on myself every year to
perform that whether I had a good year or bad year last year I've
learned to erase that season no matter how it went.We want to win,
obviously. It's a lot easier said than done, but like I said, just
because we made the playoffs doesn't mean it's a gimme this year. I
think going through the playoffs last year(losing in the first round
to Ottawa in five games), you realize what it takes.You know there are
times where you're winning and not playing well and I think for us
there were times last year when we won and we knew we didn't play well.

"But we didn't realize that could hurt us in a playoff game, where you
can't sneak by.We're going to expect a lot more from ourselves
throughout the season. Just that experience and knowing that extra
level it's going to take, it's going to force us to raise our game. By
no means are we a shoe-in for the playoffs.We have to earn our way in."
Spoken like a guy who gets it. Spoken like all the great ones tend to
speak.There was a moment at the All-Star Game last January in Dallas
when it was very evident just how much Crosby had matured. It came off
the ice an hour or so before the game when he was given the Mark
Messier leadership award. A gauntlet had been arranged to lead Crosby
back to the dressing room to avoid a mid-sized media gathering, but he
realized who the award was named after, identified a few of the media
in the room, jumped the ropes and dove into a scrum.

He understood his role as the ambassador, he respected the association
to Messier, he knew how big the stage was. Asked over the summer what,
of everything that had transpired - the new contract, the awards, the
captaincy - meant the most he was dead on again.

"Probably (the captaincy)," he says. "You always dream of one day
playing in the NHL and you always dream of hoisting that Cup and
obviously everyone knows the captain is the one who gets to do that,
so I'm hoping one day I have that opportunity. I think the captain is
one of the biggest honours."
And just a year after he was proclaimed, by many in and around the
game, to be a whiner.

"There's a reason I was given that honour and (Penguins management
has) obviously seen what I did out there and liked the way I handled
things and I'm just going to try and keep doing the same thing," he says.

Now, the Gretzky comparisons are as inevitable as they are impossible.
There will never be another Gretzky, just like there will never be
another Bobby Orr, but that doesn't mean there can't be another
special player, or two, for his time.

"It's kind of a unique time, much like when I came into the league
with Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky challenging each other," says
Hockey Night in Canada analyst Craig Simpson, who played with both
Lemieux and Gretzky. "If you look at what Crosby did in his second
year, it is really almost mind-boggling, especially under the
microscope and the pressure. Sidney has a real sense of history, he
watched Mario and Gretz set records, and I think he's poised in his
mind to do the same.


"I look at this year as being the Alexander Ovechkin-Sidney Crosby
show. It should be an interesting points race. Both Ovechkin and
Crosby have a hunger to score and both have a hunger to be great.
It'll be fun to watch them battle it out."
In their rookie season it was Ovechkin who "won" that battle, leading
the way with 106 points and 52 goals to finish third overall in
scoring and win the Calder Trophy, while Crosby was sixth. But not
last year. It belonged to Crosby, who says he hasn't reflected on the
success of his first two seasons.
"It's gone by really fast," he says. "I've always tried to look ahead
and looked to improve. For sure I'm happy the way I've come into the
league, but (it's only) two years. Maybe I'll have time after to look
back and think about it a bit more, but for now I'm just trying to get
better."