Wanna blog? Start your own hockey blog with My HockeyBuzz. Register for free today!
 

Time for Crosby to Lead

May 12, 2014, 2:42 PM ET [30 Comments]
Paul Stewart
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22

At all levels of hockey, there are great players and there are great leaders. There are also great players who hold the captaincy of their teams but who are not necessarily standout leaders on the club.

Sidney Crosby won the Art Ross Trophy this year for the second time in his career. At age 26, he's probably going to win his second Hart Trophy as the National Hockey League's most valuable player. He has won a Stanley Cup and has been to the Finals another time. There are many outstanding years ahead for him if he can remain free of the concussion scourge and otherwise stay free of serious injury.

Those are all givens. He's a great player.

Now, is he a great leader? Honestly, I am not so sure but I suspect the answer is no. It really has little to do with him having a subpar playoffs offensively thus far, although he has been neutralized in a few too many games this spring. My concern is not with a player's stats.

Some context first: I don't know Crosby personally. I retired as an NHL referee two years before he entered the League. As such, my observations on him are filtered through the prism of things I've seen great leaders do both in the hockey and non-hockey realms. I go by my own experiences on the ice as a referee and player and the thousands of players I've watched in various contexts over my 39 years in the hockey business plus my family background within the game from the officiating and coaching sides.

When I think of great leaders in the game, I recall players I refereed like Ray Bourque, Mark Messier and Joe Sakic. All of them were outstanding individual players with very different styles of play but what they had in common was they knew what example to set. They knew when to support a teammate to the hilt. They knew when to privately pull a wayward teammate into the stick room and read him the riot act. They knew how to speak to the officials and communicate with their coaches and vice versa.

Maybe Sidney Crosby does these things better than I give him credit for doing. I doubt it, though, because all the circumstantial evidence points to him still not being an especially effective team leader in the realms beyond his stellar skills.

When I observe Crosby, I see a player who has a good work ethic and an elite combination of finesse and power in his game. However, I also see a player who is too prone to be goaded into -- or to initiating -- nonsense after the whistles. When Crosby does that, he takes himself and his team off its game.

Listen, there is a two-sided coin to the calls made on the ice. It is true that Crosby is on the receiving end of a significant amount of punishment that merits a penalty but is not called. To a degree, that's his own fault.

First of all, Crosby still embellishes far too often on marginal penalties. Officials leaguewide know he does it. There's a boy that cried wolf effect to the Greg Louganis routine that spills over into other plays, even if it's a clear-cut penalty but the official sees only the aftermath. If I were officiating Crosby's games, he would have learned very quickly that I could not abide players who embellish.

I had my own style to deal with these problems. I would bark at such players and embarrass them as they embarrassed the game and ultimately themselves because they lost respect instead of gaining deserved praise for noteworthy play.

I would also have a little chat with Dan Bylsma. I would go to the coach to tell him he had a chance to coach the player. I'd tell the coach with the entire team in ear shot that if I had to guess again about a player and a play, their team would be playing on their knees all night.

As a last resort, I would bang the player with a two for unsportsmanlike conduct. Somehow, a lot of players still didn't get the message and tried to argue. Those guys quickly found a way to get a ten-minute misconduct added to the original two. I did not make exceptions for star players, either. A player like Crosby should not extra slack for embellishment.

Secondly, Crosby initiates his own fair share of physical play and it sometimes pushes the envelope a bit. He's no Lady Byng candidate. That's fine. I have no problem with that.

Just as Messier and Scott Stevens understood that they were going to receive as well as dole out punishment that wasn't always squeaky clean, Crosby also has to realize that's part of the price of doing business. Actually, I think he does realize that.

Last night, Crosby pushed the envelope a little too far. He speared New York's Dominic Moore in the groin to touch off a scrum late in the second period of the Penguins playoff game with the Rangers. Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist then deliberately doused Crosby with water, emptying the contents of his water bottle on the Pittsburgh center.

By the way, this spring has seen more spearing and water bottle shenanigans than I ever seen before. The latter is bush league stuff. The former is concerning. The NHL has already made it clear since early April that fines are the only supplementary discipline they are willing to hand out for spearing. With today's salaries, it's clearly not a deterrent.

Going back to Flyers left winger Scott Hartnell's spearing incident in the final game of the regular season and including two spears already involving Boston's Milan Lucic, there have been at least six spearing incidents around the league in the last months.

Fine and dandy.... I digress.

My point is this: It is very hard to have objective discourse about such matters. From what I've observed, it's mostly people other than Crosby who moan and groan in public about the calls he gets or doesn't get. To varying degrees, every market has its "homer" announcers and every fan base thinks the officials are out to get their team. That's not unique to hockey.

A final point about leadership. I do not get a sense that Crosby is the type of captain that a referee can go to and tell him to get a teammate in line before we have to do it. In the case of Crosby's team, that message has either not been delivered to a player like James Neal or it hasn't been done strongly enough.

For all the goals he scores, Neal is a diminishing returns player who increasingly becomes a distraction to his own team. I would like to see Crosby be a leader and get his talented teammate to realize what's at stake.

By the way, I would say the same thing about people like Messrs. Lucic and Marchand in Boston, Corey Perry in Anaheim and a host of other players on other teams. This is not a Penguins problem, per se. It's a leaguewide issue.

Ultimately, the NHL is to blame here by willfully punting the ball on any sort of meaningful discipline. The officials get sent home if they make a call deemed "too controversial." Meanwhile, there is no real fear of supplementary discipline among the players. Star players get the special snowflake treatment time and time again and team leaders don't have actually lead to be effusively praised by the national talking heads.

The Penguins have made a habit in recent years of losing in the playoffs to teams that are less talented on paper. If they go on to lose this series -- blowing a 3-1 series lead in the process -- Bylsma may pay with his job.

If the Penguins lose the series in Game Seven at home, blame the coach all you want. Perhaps you'll blame the Jekyll and Hyde goaltending as well. While you are at it, though, don't let the guy with number 87 on his back off the hook either just because a rinkside commentator gushes praise a dozen times a night about what a special player he is.

Crosby is a great player, yes. Now it's time to show he's a leader, too.

*********

Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Today, Stewart is an officiating and league discipline consultant for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and serves as director of hockey officiating for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).

The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials. Stewart also maintains a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.

Stewart is currently working with a co-author on an autobiography.
Join the Discussion: » 30 Comments » Post New Comment
More from Paul Stewart
» The Stew: Kevin Pollack, We Nearly Missed, Thank You Fans
» Officiating: Reasonable Doubt vs Miscarriages of Justice
» My Advice to Matt Rempe
» Greig, Rielly and "The Code"
» Chirping Zebras Podcast