Sidney Crosby owns an impressive resume. He’s a three-time all-star, winner of the Art Ross, Lester B. Pearson, and Hart trophies, Stanley Cup champion, youngest captain in league history, not to mention recipient of the Order of Nova Scotia! Plus he’s carried the Olympic torch and will soon own a 2010 Olympic gold medal (fuck you Russia). But there is one aspect of Sidney’s resume that should be emphasized: prolonging the careers of the game’s elder statesmen. Let’s examine.

A 36-year-old John LeClair miraculously scores 51 points, 22 of which are goals, after sitting out an entire year during the lock-out. Players who opted not to play any hockey during the lockout started the season in a daze. They gradually only sucked wind and eventually realized the game passed them (Dave Andreychuk) or they found their legs again (Mats Sundin). The changes that occurred to the NHL after the lockout did not benefit LeClair. LeClair was a pre-lockout machine, when his size and strength compensated for his lack of speed, but he was out of place when obstruction was outlawed. Riding shotgun with Sidney Crosby prolonged LeClair’s career by one year, however, even Sidney could not save LeClair’s eroding body from breaking the following year. He only lasted 21 games in 2006-2007 before being waived by the Pens. John LeClair should have sent Sidney Crosby a gift basket for allowing him to play 94 more games in the NHL.

The next player lucky enough to be transported to a younger age is Mark Recchi, who is somehow still playing in the NHL at the age of 41. Like LeClair, Recchi also sat out the entire lockout after posting a productive 75 points and +18 rating with Philadelphia in 2003-2004. By the start of the season Recchi was 37. By playing for the Pens, Recchi scored 57 points in 63 games. These gaudy offensive numbers are belied by his atrocious -28 rating for the Pens. Plus, after being shipped to the Hurricanes at the deadline his point total dropped precipitously to 7 points in 20 games. He also had a -8 rating during his mere 20 game stint with the Canes. Knowing a good opportunity when it’s presented, Recchi re-upped with the Pens realizing he could play with both Crosby and Malkin and guarantee at least 10-15 tap in goals. That year Recchi scored an astonishing 68 points (24 goals). However, the Pens thought his old body was slipping and waived him 19 games into the 2007-2008 season after a scant 2 goals. Recchi has somehow kicked around on three other teams since then and is still playing. He’s not terrible, but his time with Sidney must have deluded him into thinking he can be the next Chris Chelios.

The latest old man who owes Sidney a portion of his pay cheque is 39-year-old Bill Guerin. Before being acquired by the Pens at last season’s trade deadline Guerin had 16 goals and 20 assists in 61 games with the lowly Islanders. After the trade, Guerin scored 5 goals and 7 assists in 12 games, largely because the efforts of Sidney Crosby. This year Guerin has 11 goals and 15 assists in 38 games, which puts him on pace to tie his highest offensive campaign since 2006-2007. Coincidently, that year Guerin’s played with assist-master Thornton during the stretch run after a trade with the San Jose Sharks.

I don’t mean to discredit the value that Guerin brings to the Penguins, since his acquisition, combined with the trade for Chris Kunitz and the firing of Michel Therrien, catapulted the Penguins to their first Stanley Cup championship since the early 1990s. I just want to highlight the restorative abilities of Crosby. Obama should use him as a part of his new health care bill.

I’m not suggesting that both Mark Recchi and Bill Guerin have no business in the league anymore, rather, I’m arguing that playing with Crosby allows them to easily produce numbers they would be hard pressed to duplicate otherwise. You’re telling me a 39-year-old Bill Guerin has any business scoring more than 40 points in a season.

The common theme among these three players, aside from their age, is their lack of speed. Recchi at one point was fast, but Guerin and LeClair were slow when they were young. Playing with Crosby means this isn’t a problem. Don’t want to skate very much? Don’t worry, Sid will thread the puck through two defenders and you can tap it in. To play with Sidney all you really have to do is keep your stick on the ice and clear his way.

Since the Penguins have both Crosby and Malkin, they will always be a favourable destination for the game’s older players. A year or two with these players is a chance to pad your stats and ensure an extra month or more of hockey in the spring. It’s also a great chance to play with two of the best players in the NHL and show their kids they are actually able to score at the NHL level; their tales of 40 goal seasons aren’t just wild lies.

I like this fight between Pittsburgh’s Bill Guerin against Carolina’s Tim Gleason because both sides get their chance to get some shots in. There’s no doubt that Gleason wins the early part of the fight but when Guerin piledrives him into the ice and then throws a few forearms to the face, it evens the score.

[Hockey Fights]

Anyone complaining about not getting any snow, here you go!

A good fresh inch an a half for your commute tomorrow. Not too bad, a friendly reminder that yes, it’s December.

Truthfully, we should be thankful that the conditions aren’t as bad as they were one year ago, yesterday.

What, you don’t remember what happened a year ago, yesterday?

A fifteen car pileup on I-79.

A big thanks to http://www.edinborofire.org/ for all of those images. Those guys are always on their game about updating their site, and serve Edinboro well.

Thanks, guys!

On an unrelated note, if anyone caught the Penguins game tonight they were treated to a small dedication to Edinboro University graduate Michael Crawshaw, who died in the line of duty in Penn Hills on Sunday.

Fans were then treated to an amazingly fast-paced hockey game, which unfortunately for Pittsburgh fans ended in defeat.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the video of the pre-game ceremony with the moment of silence held for Michael anywhere on youtube, however I could find a picture of the flags set at half-mast at the Mellon Arena for him.

Also, a video of Penguins’ Bill Guerin fighting Hurricane’s Tim Gleason

A timely Penguin power play goal in the third period proved the difference in a 4-1 victory over Colorado last night, which…

Wait, hold on a sec.

When I typed “timely Penguin power play goal,” a squiggly red line appeared underneath the entire phrase, and when I right-clicked it, WordPress suggested “timely Penguin power play FAILURE”. Thanks for looking out, WordPress, but for once, this was not a typo; I was gonna click “add to dictionary,” but I don’t have tremendous confidence that I’m gonna need to type this phrase again any time soon.

Still, the Pens kept rolling along last night, with Sidney Crosby notching his 18th and 19th goals off the season, putting him on a ridiculous pace for 54 goals over an 82-game season. Obviously, he probably won’t keep this pace up forever, but this projection takes into account his career-worst scoreless streak from earlier in the year, so it’s not like the dude scored twice in the season opener and we’re putting him on pace for 160 tallies. Right now, Crosby is playing the best regular-season hockey of his career; he’s playing so well, we might actually stop complaining about how the Pens still need to get a winger to play with him. But seriously dude, the Pens still need to get a winger to play with him. Crap, guess we’re not totally there yet.

I want to keep a clip of the Rupp-to-Crosby goal on my phone at all times so I can whip it out whenever a busted play results in fans angrily yelling about shooting the puck. Sure, the Penguins (like every team) sometimes pass when they should shoot, but on that rush, if Rupp had shot the puck right into Budaj, which he almost assuredly would have from that angle, fans would’ve just credited Budaj with a nice save on a scoring chance, but if Rupp had tried to pass back to Crosby and the pass had missed, people would’ve been violently screaming at him for not shooting the puck, even though Rupp’s chances of connecting that pass for a Crosby tap-in are better than his chances of scoring from one foot away with Budaj right in front of him. Again, obviously the Pens (and Crosby in particular) sometimes make an extra pointless pass instead of shooting it, but that goal should stand as a reminder that sometimes, a pass that goes awry isn’t automatically a worse play than an easily-saved shot on goal.

From an Avs stand-point, the game actually seemed pretty even throughout, and as has happened several times the past couple seasons, I have trouble believing the Mellon Arena numbers that the Pens outshot Colorado 33-16. Of course, the Avs got a goal from a dude named T.J. Galiardi (and should’ve had two), and probably would’ve pulled ahead if they had just called up an even more randomly named dude from the AHL to score his first NHL goal against the Penguins. It was a pretty tightly-checked game, especially the first period, but the Pens ended up keeping things even til the third and cashed in when they had to on a power play.

Man, just typed that sentence a second time and still don’t believe it. What’s next, Chris Bourque NEVERSCORINGEVER. Hm, that was weird — I tried to type “Chris Bourque scoring” and WordPress autocorrected it…

For the third time this season the Bench Boss is coming at you with another unlikely fight from the National Hockey League. This one is a little different in the way that the two combatants, Ryan Getzlaf and Bill Guerin, are no strangers to dropping the gloves but it is still a rarity for two marquee players (if Bill Guerin still falls into that category) to have a go. Something of note to listen for at the end of the fight, the announcer says “its not too often you see a couple of elder statesmen going at it,” so apparently the 24 year old Getzlaf is an elder statesmen.

Go here for epic Pens wins.

Two times I have gone to the Sharp Edge Beer Emporium in Friendship to take in a Pens game with friends, and two times I have been rewarded with excellent hockey.  Both times the games have been in November.  The similarities could go on forever, but the fact is when you drink good beer with good friends good things happen.

On my first visit to the Sharpedge I took in the rematch of the Stanley Cup Final, which resulted in an epic finish for the Pens and Jordan Staal.

via YouTube (vimike77)

Saturday night it was a battle between two top Eastern Conference teams that could meet in the playoffs.  If the games are anything like this, it may rival the second round series versus the Caps for awesomeness.

via YouTube (AGreatDayForHockey87)

So if you are in the burgh and want to take in a Pens game somewhere other than your living room or Mellon Arena.  I suggest the Sharp Edge.

Not the best game for the Pens’ D, Brent Johnson or (for the first time ever) the power play, but nothing mattered — last night surpassed Jordan Staal vs. Detroit from last year as the most exciting Penguins regular season game since… I don’t know… something memorable Rico Fata probably did.

Not to be overlooked with Guerin’s game-tier or Dupuis’ bizarre winner were an insane deflection by Crosby, goals by Mark Eaton AND Jay McKee (on a Mike Rupp backhander), and…another goal by Pascal Dupuis.

Did this really happen?

Twenty-four players have played for both organizations. Current NHLers Bill Guerin, Shean Donovan, Mikael Samuelsson, Wayne Primeau and Matt Bradley.

The former players are

LW-Errey, Nieminen, Hicks, Capuano

C-Miller, Kevin; Miller, Kip; DePalma

RW-Falloon, Ekman

D- Bodger, Norton, McSorley, Hawgood, Dollas, Wilkinson, Kyte, Ahola, Heins, Jakopin

EDIT: Sharks 5, Penguins 0

Bill Guerin- 3 shots in 16:15.

Sorry, but not much else (than what already has been said) needs to be said about the Yankees defeating the Phillies in the 2009 World Series.  The Yankees had the best PECOTA projections in the preseason, which led me to correctly pick them to win the World Series (meanwhile, we’ll forget about the Mets pick).  They had the best on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS (and the second-best batting average) in the league in the regular season.  Couple that with above-average team pitching, and you had the best record in the MLB.  Sure, the Phillies were a darn good team, but they weren’t the best in the league.  The better team won this series, and did so with a more balanced starting lineup and more reliable pitching (it helps that Charlie Manuel made the series’ worst decision by not starting Cliff Lee in Game 4 and instead putting Joe Blanton on the rubber).

As I briefly mentioned after the NLCS, the Phillies became the fourth team this calendar year to repeat as conference champions.  The other three teams won just one league championship each in those two years.

The frequence repeats have happened before.  As I mentioned during the summer, there were five instances of multiple of championship rematches (in 1952-53, 1955-56, 1957-58, 1968-69 and 1977-78) in one year, including the year of 1958, which featured three championship rematches.  The NFL was the only one of the four major U.S. sports leagues that didn’t have a championship rematch, and they were and still are just fine with that, considering how the 1958 NFL Championship Game went down.

I’ll do a bit of research to figure out exactly how many times at least four teams repeated as conference champions in a calendar year.  Note that the AL and NL are considered conferences in this discussion.  Hopefully, I’ll post my findings soon.  I have that and the BCS computers analysis to finish up soon.

Anyways, here’s a reminder of the four teams who repeated as conference champions in 2009:

Detroit Red Wings (2008 Stanley Cup Champions, 2009 Western Conference Champions)
The Red Wings exchanged three wins with overtime/shootout losses in the 2008-09 season.  Detroit finished 54-21-7 with 115 points in 2007-08, dominating the Western Conference en route to the top seed.  The Wings then finished 51-21-10 with 112 points as the Western Conference second seed in 2008-09.  The difference for the Red Wings truly came in the Stanley Cup Finals.  In the 2008 NHL Playoffs, the Red Wings swept the semis and conference finals, and lost just four games en route to the 2008 Stanley Cup.  The Pittsburgh Penguins were simply outmatched then, as they couldn’t handle the depth and execution of the mighty Wings.  (Seriously, I can’t remember seeing better passing in the NHL then I did with the Red Wings in the 2008 NHL Playoffs.)  However, in the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals, the tough-minded Penguins weathered the Detroit storm.  The Red Wings may have been the better team, thanks to another year of amazing depth and execution, but Pittsburgh put up a much tougher battle the second time around and won the 2009 Stanley Cup in a classic seven-game series.

Los Angeles Lakers (2008 Western Conference Champions, 2009 NBA Finals Champions)
In the preseason, the 2007-08 season didn’t look like a championship season for the Lakers.  The Lakers did start well, though, thanks to Andrew Bynum.  Bynum got injured, so the Lakers pulled off one of the greatest trades in recent NBA history, acquiring Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies.  From that moment on, Los Angeles put the pressure on the rest of the Western Conference, virtually forcing the hands of the Mavericks and Suns.  Dallas traded a much younger point guard in Devin Harris for Jason Kidd.  Meanwhile, Phoenix traded for Shaquille O’Neal, who didn’t fit the run-and-gun, fast-paced style of Mike D’Antoni’s offense.  Both Mavs and Suns were dropped in five games in the first round of the 2008 NBA Playoffs, while the Lakers were never truly challenged en route to the Western Conference title.  Unfortunately, the Lakers had to go up against the Big Three and the Boston Celtics.  The Lakers lost in six, and lost horribly in Game 6, 131-92.  One year later, the Lakers had Bynum back and Gasol broken in, so they dominated both the regular season and playoffs.  Kobe Bryant put on a classic playoff run, built by swagger and determination, and beat the Magic in six to earn his first NBA Finals Championship without his big bro in crime, Shaquille O’Neal.

Philadelphia Phillies (2008 World Series Champions, 2009 National League Champions)
The Phillies, a franchise long hindered by excessive losing, finally got rewarded for building a strong team.  The Phillies entered the 2008 MLB season with 10023 regular season losses in franchise history, the most in U.S. sports history.  Still, they had one of the most impressive home-grown young nuclei in the league, if not the most impressive.  Chase Utley (2000 1st round), Cole Hamels (2002 1st round), Jimmy Rollins (1996 2nd round) and Ryan Howard (2001 5th round) all were drafted by Philly, and became stars in 2008.  Add in 2008 additions Pedro Feliz, Joe Blanton and Brad Lidge, and the Phillies were ready to contend.  Whether you think the competition was weak and simply not ready to contend against the peaking Phils or not, the fact is that Philadelphia took championship form and earned their success.  Finally the city and the franchise was lifting from a loser’s curse, winning the 2008 World Series.  Harry Kalas spent 28 years waiting for another championship, and it was great to hear him call the final strike of the 2008 championship season.  Unfortunately, Kalas passed away in April, and we all know what just happened in the 2009 World Series.

Pittsburgh Penguins (2008 Eastern Conference Champions, 2009 Stanley Cup Champions)
Speaking of young nuclei, the Penguins may have the best young nucleus in all of sports.  Centermen Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal led the Pens, and should continue to do so for years.  The big three, spearheading a very talented team, finally broke out in the postseason in 2008.  The second-seeded Penguins lost just two games en route to the 2008 Eastern Conference Championship.  Of course, they ran into the Wings in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals.  To make matters worse, the Pens struggled in the first half of the 2008-09 season.  On February 18, 2009, Pittsburgh stood at 27-25-5 and five points out of the playoffs.  However, the Pens eventually made one of the biggest turnarounds in league history, and then made a remarkable playoff run as the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference (they earned the fourth seed on the last day of the regular season).  New additions Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin helped in a big way, while intertim head coach Dan Bylsma sparked a hidden determination.  Pascal Dupuis, Brooks Orpik, Sergei Gonchar and Maxime Talbot, among others, provided great support for the young stud centers and the new additions.  Somehow, Pittsburgh weathered two classic seven-game series, the Eastern Conference Semifinals and Stanley Cup Finals, en route to the 2009 Cup victory.

Exciting time for the boys: Their names are on the Cup and they got their crazy looking rings. Look at this male model!

Image via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I almost laughed out loud when I saw this. Preciousburgh Penguins! Adorable quote from Guerin from the PPG article:

It is hardware, but it’s not hard to wear. Just like everything else with the Pittsburgh Penguins, it’s first class. But now it’s back to work. Everybody wants to beat us, and we want to win again.

Improvements to the Cup:

The Stanley Cup and the Vince Lombardi trophy will be at the City-County Building from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, October 1. I might go take a look at them, and the season opener is Friday! I hope for everyone’s sake it doesn’t rain, because they’re showing the game on the big screen outside of the arena.

*I apologize for the lack of Fleury related coverage. I wish there was a picture of him with his ring!