And Now, the World?

Sidney Crosby's NHL season is over, one in which he asserted himself as the league's No. 1 drawing card and, quite probably, it's most valuable player.

Most impressively, there really wasn't a mis-step along the way. The Kid comports himself with class at every turn, even when being baited by Don Cherry or the fans of Montreal.

Now, with his sophomore season in the bag, Crosby faces a tricky decision.

Should he join Team Canada for the upcoming world championships in Moscow?

You can bet as soon as the moment feels right Canadian GM Steve Yzerman - boy, doesn't that title make a lot of us suddenly feel old? - will be on the phone to Crosby and his agent, Pat Brisson, to ask if he's willing to go for a second straight year.

Yzerman, needless to say, knows exactly how Crosby feels today, for he was in his position many times in the late 1980s and early 1990s before the Detroit Red Wings annually started going so deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Exhausted and disappointed, it's not easy for these athletes to quickly change their mindset, pack their bags and head overseas for what is a long, grinding international tournament of ambiguous importance in the modern international hockey world.

Crosby, however, isn't just any player. He has become the face of Canadian hockey and most believe that when Vancouver 2010 rolls around, he'll be the captain of Team Canada as it goes for its second gold in 58 years.

Many see this as a national duty, and there will be many who would expect Crosby to go to Moscow and join a team that as of this morning has named two goalies, three defenceman and eight forwards to its roster, along with six other players - including top Chicago draft Jonathan Toews - to a practice roster for the training sessions and preliminary games.

More to the point, international competition is very different from the NHL, and while Crosby did well with 16 points in nine games last year, only repeated exposure to the bigger ice results in the experience necessary to succeed in the big tournaments, like the Olympics.

There's a little Canadian pride on the line here. Already, Canadians felt screwed last weekend when NBC took the Pittsburgh-Ottawa game for an afternoon broadcast, keeping Crosby off Hockey Night in Canada for, as it turns out, the one game for which he would have been available.

Now, you can bet the Pens aren't going to be crazy about Crosby playing in the worlds. GM Ray Shero would love for No. 87 just to go home and rest his 19-year-old bones for a few months, particularly with the team looking at possibly doing a new contract for Crosby this summer. Pittsburgh owner Mario Lemieux warmed to international competition in his final years as a pro, but there were many more years in which he turned down Canada or wasn't available for the worlds, Canada Cup or World Cup.

Making this decision even more interesting is that the New York Islanders might be eliminated as early as tonight. Imagine the optics if Ryan Smyth, Captain Canada, were to agree to play for Canada one more time and Crosby opted to stay home?

Crosby, by now, has already learned that the political landmines just get more complex and difficult to avoid as a star becomes a superstar.

Comments

[Bo Driad]

Ultimately, it's up to The Kid, but I know if I was 19 and I was offered the chance to keep my hockey season going through an expenses-paid trip to Europe to play for Canada, I'd be at the airport with bags packed in about 10 minutes!

[Gary]

If Sid was an American, no doubt the NHL would want him to play for Team USA.
The NHL is American and Canadians come second. And Canadians allow it.
Bettman trashes the Canada cup because it won't sell in the USA and not one Canadian cared. Bettman gets rid of the Prince of Wales and Clarence Campbell conferences, the Adams, Norris, Patrick and Smythe divisions and no one cares.
Bettman treats NBC as the number one broadcaster and with that says f*** Canadians.
Two Canadian teams are eliminated from the playoffs under questionable circumstances on the last weekend and no one cares. (The NY Islanders get TEN powerplays to the Flyers 2 in their second last game that they needed to win. The Leafs get 7 powerplays plays and two 5 on 3's against Montreal to eliminate them(when did you ever see that happen?)
Vancouver fans boo the American anthem (mainly because of comments made by an American sports writer) and everyone makes a big deal of it, including interviewing Joe Sakic, yet when Pittsburg fans boo the Canadian anthem (this year) no one cares.
Antonio Davis makes unbelievavble comments about his kids being raised in Canada and no one cares, imagine a Canadian saying something similar in the USA.
And to top it off, a popular hockey publication, published in Canada spells the American way because they don't want to offend Americans.(guess it's ok to offend Canadians?)
Too bad a smart lawyer doesn't take the NHL to court to stop the NHL violating the Charter of rights and freedoms. Canadian kids in the draft are being denied their constituational right to play in Canada.
I can bet that when the day comes that there is as many American kids being drafted as Canadian (that time is coming) the American teams will push for protective terrority rights.
pity only in Canada.

[Ron Mackey]

Dear Damien:

Great that Moore's article appeared in the paper, and good of you to highlight the hypocrisy of the success of the Ducks, a skill team with a line of goons.

But it's not enough. Moore is too moderate, too conciliatory.

The only way to stamp out the injurious hockey is through vigorous penalizing, not of the sort discussed by Moore, but of the sort practiced by the NBA - half-season penalties for 'flagrant fouls with intent to injure,' etc, and not '10 minute misconducts,' or 'suspensions in denominations of 10 games.' The players are not detterred, and they need to be.

In my opinion, the Bertuzzi case was the litmus test - the league need to ban him pending rehabilitation, and its failure to ban him resulted in both the farce of his return and the injustice of his unwillingness to come clean with Moore.

[Stephen]

Piss and moan, Gary, piss and moan. Yes, Bettman thinks that the game is better served by promoting it as much as possible in the states, and, while I disagree, I can appreciate his point. But to suggest that hockey games are being called in order to keep Canadian teams out of the playoffs simply based on penalty calls (to get the ISLANDERS into the playoffs??) is simply ludicrous. And what Antonio Davis (who is almost universally panned in this city) has to do with the NHL playoffs is beyond comprehension.

And a constitutional right to play hockey in Canada? Are you completely mad??! The NHL is neither part of the government nor is it a government corporation, therefore the Charter simply does not apply. There are a great many smart lawyers in this country, but I doubt there's a single legal genius brilliant enough to overcome such a difficulty.

Damien, I can't believe you allowed Gary's comment to stand at all, except perhaps to help us imagine what you have to deal with for the ones you must moderate away.

[Moe Green]

Hey Damien,

I live in Austin, Texas and have seen little of the Canucks this season. I watched the Luongo v Turco series and have to say wow, those are goaltenders. With all the talk of how weak the Leafs were this season, wouldn't it be fair to say that Luongo would have provided the Leafs with somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8 additional wins last season? Wouldn't those 12-16 additional points have put them in contention for first instead of eight? So are the Leafs then one Luongo away from cup contention? Ergo, are the Leafs that weak? Love to hear your thoughts.

[Leafs fan from Sheffield]

Dear Mr. Cox,

This has nothing to do with your column but, I have been reading you since I was a kid and I just need to vent to someone I respect about this posting:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/201149.

The comments are littered with ravings about how Mats Sundin's best days are behind him and blahblahblah. I am so sick of hearing this from Leafs' fans. I was a kid when he was traded for Clark and it killed all of us a little inside but, look at what he's done while he has been here. I am sure I don't need to remind you of his stats suffice it to say he's still the team's leading scorer. And all this with a nation of fans hounding and hating him.

All I'm saying, I guess, is that I wish someone like yourself would chastize the Leafs Nation publicly and in print for their lack of respect to this man. Case in point: I was in Sheffield when he scored his 500th. A hat-trick, game-winner, in over-time. I almost cried because it was so right! Just vintage Sundin and not one hat on the ice.

[Gary]

Stephen.
I've checked over 200 games and NEVER seen a ratio of 5 to 1 in penalties. Ludicrous to suggest the NHL fixes it? I don't think so. Do I think they do, no, but it is suspicous.IMHO. Enough said on that.
Maybe you should read what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is about. It protects the rights and freedoms of Canadians. Therefore the charter applies to all Canadians including Canadian hockey players. You missed the point. Why should a Canadian kid be forced to play professional hockey in the USA?
Under section 1 of the charter it specifically states that every Canadian has the right to live and seek employment anywhere in Canada.

In part 2, section 6, it states, Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right

(a)to move to, and take up residence in, any province, and

(b)to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province.

How then, can a Canadian born hockey player who wants to play in Canada pursue these rights if there is no other professional league for them to play in?
Even lawyers state a professional draft is, per se, a violation of U.S. federal anti-trust law.

So contrary to what you believe, it does apply.

As for your suggestion to Damien, I guess Damien believes in fereedom of speech as long as it does not incite hatred.
By the way a friend of mine who is a lawyer says it just takes one case of a Canadian teenager to challange the draft and a whole can of worms will open.

I suspect your come back would be, well if they don't want to play for the team that drafted them they can do a Lindros or just not play professional hockey in North America.

[Moe Green]

How important is hockey, especially NHL hockey, to Canadians? While a "constitutional right" to play hockey in Canada is ludicrous, there is something the goverment could do to protect hockey in Canada. First, let's ensure that Canadian teams are Canadian owned. Make it a law that Canadian sports franchises must be wholly owned by Canadian citizens, communities or wholly Canadian owned corporations (yuk). Oh I'm sure there will be complaints by the ultra rich, but this game is more important than their profits. Protectionist? You bet. Free-enterprise fundementalists will certainly argue. But who isn't tired of the errosion of our Canadian heritage at the hands of multi-national corporations. I for one would like to see our goverment protect the Leafs and Canadians as well as Eatons, Tim Horton's and Canadian Tire. Unbridled profits need to take a back seat to whats best for this country and its people.

[Stephen]

Gary, the ratio doesn't matter. I'm quite willing to agree that a 5-1 ratio is crazy, but unless you do some sort of a qualitative analysis as well the numbers mean nothing (it's quite possible that one team might have committed 5x the fouls of another, and it might happen once every 200 games). And even if you established that the game was indeed reffed unfairly (which really wouldn't be that difficult, I agree), the idea that the NHL would prefer the Islanders to the Leafs or Canadians and further that it would actively rig games to cause such are extraordinary enough to require a significant level of proof to be reasonable.

As for the Charter, I've already read it. And read commentaries on it. And taught it. And written papers on it. Yes, the Charter "applies to all Canadians" (indeed, it applies to all residents as well), but I suggest you consult your lawyer friend on the 1986 case Dolphin Delivery for an explanation of the limitations of its scope, which simply excludes private organizations like the NHL. The sections from the Charter which you're citing are known as the "Mobility Rights" and mean that Canadians can move freely through the country without restriction. They have the right to "PURSUE the gaining of A livelihood", which means that they have the right to attempt to gain employment without discrimination. No one is being "forced" to play hockey in the US. Young people are voluntarily choosing to pursue a career in hockey and voluntarily choosing to pursue one in the NHL and voluntarily choosing to enter the draft. No government or government corporations are involved, and in the absence of such involvement, re Dolphin Delivery, the Charter simply does not apply. While your lawyer friend IS correct that the draft could certainly be challenged with a definite possibility of success, that challenge just won't work under the Charter.