Please do not read the following post expecting any kind of serious sports knowledge or analysis. Or anything serious from this blog. At all. Ever.
Now put on some pump-up music and get ready for tonight.
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Let's just get this out of the way right now -- I freaking love Sidney Crosby.
Less than I love Kyle, of course (slightly). I like to think that Kyle is the perfect blend of Crosby and Prince Harry, my other dream man. Dark but tall. Competitive but goofy. Mostly straight-laced, with just a smidgen of paparazzi-punching propensity. (And really, who needs millions and millions of dollars anyway?)
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Gosh, my iPhone photography is truly awful. But still. You see it, I know you do.
Anyway, I'm getting a little tired of people beating up on my boy Sid. And not just right at this moment, during a slightly dirty and thus far disappointing series. And not just this past year, during a horrible recovery process from a head/neck injury ( that stuff is no joke, yinz).
This piling on of Crosby has been happening since he came into the league. The man can't shuffle his feet without people saying he's exaggerating the foot shuffle, or wondering why he has to shuffle at all, or claiming he's a dirty shuffler. Or, you know, trying to cut off his foot.
Can't we just appreciate the especial genius that is Sidney Crosby on the ice (not to mention -- again -- how's he's really really really really ridiculously good looking).
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(Kyle's face while reading this):
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I think I have a type (bad-tempered, hairy, swarthy gentlemen -- beat, my still heart!)
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Wait, back to sports.
I feel like the only person in Pittsburgh, or maybe on Planet Earth, who appreciated Crosby's actions in Game 3. (Also, I'm most definitely the only person on earth who likes the Steelers 1934 throwbacks, or who thinks Tyler Kennedy is kind of cute -- I'm a oddball).
Sidney always often takes flak for being too polished, for giving stock answers in interviews. I like that he got frustrated and fired up. I smiled when he acted, in the words of one reporter, "petulantly" because of those frustrations. I don't even care at all that he slapped away Voracek’s glove. Of course his teammates stepped in for fights and pulled him out of them -- he's one of, if not the, best hockey players in the world. Can you imagine how frustrating all this would be?
Should he do it every game? No. Every time things don't go the way he wants? Of course not. But can he be excused for doing it when he's been sidelined for so long, when his team is losing momentum halfway through every single game, when we're playing those villainous, despised Flyers? Hell yes.
(Can I get an amen?!)
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He gets criticized for being a whiner... you know what? I'm a whiner too sometimes.
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Nobody is 100% perfect (I hear one otherwise pretty great guy is a Cowboys fan). The more I see of Crosby's faults, the more I like him. Because who can't identify with cursing the door that slammed your finger, or kicking the step that stubbed your toe (because that makes sense)? People get frustrated, yinz. And the only thing that makes it feel better is to take it out on something/someone physically, or to complain about it. I recommend both.
We love our agitators in Pittsburgh (Ruutu and Talbot were some of my personal favorites), and we hate them on every other team, and that's the point. I can understand Philly fans criticism of Crosby, although I still think that they're the scum of the earth. But everyone else... yinz guys needs to back off.
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Let's go show some bullies who's boss tonight (you know, anything can happen).
LET'S GO PENS!