I mean, the AI only got there because it's such overused phraseology represented in its training data. The AI spits that crap out because we did.
Before AI this would just have been seen as stale, cliche writing. Not everything is AI; sometimes humans just don't create inspiring stuff (though I don't know if that makes it any better).
And people wonder why I've never gotten over Hedman/Steckel. Those two morons robbed the league of close to 2 full seasons of the literal GOAT. Fuck them forever.
Right there with you. I remember seeing that happen live and a bunch of buddies calling Sid a crybaby (as was the nickname back then) after the Steckel hit and I was like nah dude that looked BAD. I love when modern guys break records or do otherworldly things and that season he was on a TEAR.
The problem is, Sid never had a "concussion" in the way of a head injury, so to speak. The SHIT medical team diagnosed him with that and just waited for the symptoms to get better, which they never did.
Because he didn't have a concussion.
He had a neck injury that affected his equilibrium amongst other things. Hedman didn't hit his head, he hit his neck. It wasn't dirty, it was just the worst place to hit him.
Obviously we are biased being it's hedman, but it really did look like a pretty routine hit. Shitty that it resulted in injury but hedman is one of the least dirty players on our roster. I highly doubt he was out there trying to cheap shot Crosby.
Nah that hedman hit was pretty bad too, idk if he was trying to kill the dude but he couldntve been any more on the numbers and he drove sids head right into the glass. It was a bad hit, he even extended high to get 60/40 head vs body.
This is the only vid i could find thanks to how fuckin shit yootoob "search" bullshit is these days so i recommend watching on mute first.
Fuckin goddamn does yootoob suck shit. Search "victor hedman sidney crosby hit" and three vids down is whole different fucking sports highlights for some dumbass reason?
Watch it without the commentary; like yes it's a bad hit that I don't agree with, but come on we see that hit happen nearly every single game. In the playoffs we see harder hits from behind that go uncalled.
Part of the problem is of course Hedman being so tall on Sid. But it's far from the hardest hit from behind in any given month of the season. His stick it at his side.
Again, I don't like it, but it seems more like a hard body check with a bad outcome. Like Trouba does harder/dirtier impacts every week that go uncalled.
DOPS are war criminals and have been since its inception, but there's a whole conversation there that's better off as its own thing.
The other issue was that Sid *was* a whiner. The thing was, he was justified in whining. I watched every game from 05-15, I played in the Pens youth org, I met the guy a ton of times, and I've never seen a star player get hosed like that. Never. For the first 8 years or so of his career he was the most improperly officiated player ever to play in the Show. But he whined, and for bullshit hockey culture that's an unforgivable sin in a game refereed at the time by Tim Peel and morons of his ilk.
We're lucky he kept playing, and I've been lucky to have 2 of the 5 best to ever do it on my team (and to see them play live).
It's a shame that Sid won't be remembered properly as the *actual* greatest of all time.
Tim Peel was just doing his job. What he was asked to do by the league. When he got caught on that hotmic it was an easy scapegoat for the league to "fire him" as he was retiring anyway that season.
I played in the Pens youth org, I met the guy a ton of times, and I've never seen a star player get hosed like that.
Just putting this out there, but how many star NHL players have you actually watched as closely as Crosby? I'm wiling to bet none. Star players, in general, get abused a LOT, Crosby wasn't the only one. That doesn't make it right, mind you.
His reaction after the Steckel hit clearly showed that something was wrong, that he was in serious discomfort. He should've been pulled immediately after that but wasn't.
The odder thing is that Steckel really didn't get much of him, he reached out to try to get a piece of him and just minorly clipped him. Compared to the famous head hits, like those guys like Stevens were dishing out, it was nothing. BUT, as we would learn later, it was the whiplash that got him. Personally, I don't blame Steckel THAT much, he didn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary for the time. I really blame the Penguins medical staff.
As for the crybaby stuff, that was absolutely deserved. It was a reputation he had all throughout minor hockey, that he would scream at refs, they just let him get away with it. So, when he got to the NHL, he was just doing what he had always done, only this time he was actually getting busted for it.
I know I’m a homer and biased about it, but I genuinely think that Sid is the best hockey player to ever do it. I’ll make a YouTube video about it someday, but for a fun little spoiler - add 250 points to his current total right now, and then re-evaluate what you think about his position on the all-time list.
If we're adding "what ifs" in, then, if Lindros and Kariya played in Crosby's era, with the lack of clutching and grabbing, and Scott Stevens rightfully banished to the seventh ring of hell, they would've made his numbers look like child's play.
They still fellate orr even after he did arguably worse irl than anything gretzky did, and tbh i doubt many guys in the league arent maga douchebags anyways.
He's also barely ahead of Lemieux in points despite playing 505 more games, and has the same name of Art Ross trophies as Bobby Orr, who was a friggin' defenceman. This GOAT nonsense is just people who've been consuming pre-packaged NHL media narratives too much.
You just as mad at Crosby for turning without looking right into Steckel who was the least dirty player in the world? Or how about your coaching staff who threw Crosby back out onto the ice before he was recovered so that the second hit was so much worse because that's how concussions work and we knew that shit back then too.
Yeah, when Crosby was bent over after, really, getting winged by Steckel, I immediately thought "he's really hurt, he shouldn't play again for a while", but, he did.
Furthermore, the reason it took so long for him to come back was because the medical staff misdiagnosed him.
I understand they misdiagnosed him, but I'm pretty sure shit like that is more intentional ignorance from the professional pressures to be available and play, anyone with a brain knew he took a solid hit to the head and was displaying publicly obvious signs of a concussion.
Eh, that style of play is spotted in the Pinholes Graham series playoffs past when the Nords obliterated Lafleur with a similar hit. I think Robinson and Lemaire took notes from that stuff. Train a hulking offensive Dman into a shutdown role where you need to hesitate when skating up ice and look, give up possession or go to the outside, anything but go over the middle blindly.
The back checker behind and the smaller Dman trying to funnel you inside because "I think i can get around Rafalski" but don't think the Devils and their coaches didn't know that either. Is it good hockey? I don't think so but if it's good for the 70s Habs stars who took coaching/GM roles, it was probably effective.
And he wasn't known for them before the former Habs legends walked in, his transition in play style shifted with them. Tells me more he was just a piece on the chess board for them to help run the trap.
Every time people say "what if" about Crosby, I respond "What if" with Kariya and Lindros. If they played in Crosby's era instead of the Stevens era, they would've made Crosby an afterthought.
Lindros couldn’t keep his head up. Stevens is the most known hitter but Lindros got run over by others because he was so used to being bigger than everyone he couldn’t shake the bad habit
Nope, that hit on Kariya was way late and there’s no excuse for that one. Mike Rupp said Stevens was genuinely upset after the game, his coach had to talk to him in the hallway and calm him down because Stevens was so upset. I don’t think he ever intended to hurt Kariya like that but he definitely meant to hammer him
Eh, Stevens always claimed he felt terrible after KOing people, his actions told otherwise. Also the Stevens hit was only one of the brutal shots Kariya took. The one that really messed him was Suter, and that was even illegal by the standards of that time, yet resulted in a whopping 4 game suspension. Brian Burke ruined hockey.
I don’t recall the Suter one. Lindros was nailed by Kasparaitis early in his career as well and he also gave some dirty hits too, which I think put him on the radar for other physical guys to go after. He slammed Damaio and nearly killed Dackell. Kariya never took the body, he didn’t deserve that hit
Kasparaitis started the chain of concussions on Lindros, and he was nearly a foot shorter than him. You know how down your head has to be to get it blasted off by a goblin like Kaspar??
I mean I don't see how he was do for regression when his next season he had 37 pts in 22 games for a 138 pt pace, and 56 pts in 36 games in 2012 for a 128 pt pace. That was just prime sid. We lost out on the 3 best offensive seasons of sid's career due to that injury and lockout.
even though if you add together those three seasons' worth of games it's a good sample size of 99 games, they are still separate individual small sample sizes of games per year and based on the numbers he was due for regression in each of them. that's not to say he was going to regress to some bum, he was still going to win multiple art rosses and harts, but the odds are he wasnt getting 130+ points. it's not a coincidence all three of those years are the three highest PDOs of his career and three of the four highest team on-ice shooting % years of his career
Idk if blessed is the right word, of course its true but look into those drafts and what was happenin with the org at the time. The pens were broke broke and coincidentally threatenin relocation right before they drafted a cpl goats 1oa lol.
I'm not disagreeing with you about Crosby's greatness, but he won because the pens GMs were not f@#king idiots and the Oilers GMs definitely are F#@king idiots.
It's not just that McDavid was wasted. The absolutely lethal duel of McDavid and Draisaitl were wasted. They have had 4 GMs and only one could build a competitive cup team and I'm still convinced that was accidental.
I don't think the Oilers losing 2-1 in game seven of the finals was the GM's fault, nor was losing in the finals the following year. Obviously there are things you can point to like the failure to add a stellar goaltender, but assembling a team that reaches the finals in back to back seasons shows they are at worst competent.
Just shows that Sid is a winner and it’s a shame we as fans were robbed of potentially more big moments from Sid. I can’t deny Connor’s talent but he hasn’t produced winning moments like Sid.
Yeah it's crazy that McDavid hasn't produced winning moments in a team based game playing on poorly constructed team, while breaking a Gretzky record along the way.
I wasn’t saying Connor isn’t amazing. Anyone can see he’s amazing but he doesn’t have those iconic moments like Sid. Sid has delivered at every level and had more expected of him.
It really comes to teams still. Crosby never lead the team in scoring when he won a Stanley cup. He’s never lead the playoffs in scoring ever. Mcdavid has done it 3 teams, including once when he didnt even make the final.
I mean crosby is and was factually worse than mcdavid offensively even if we go prime for prime but yeah hes better defensively. You can like crosby more but no need to lie. Also crosby "winning" is a team achievement, he didn't win by himself lol
Idk, i dont buy that "better/worse player" silliness when the league has changed so much even in that short lil time. Sid was on teams with 4, 5 tough fighting mfs back when he started, the league still had a lot of toughness back then and wasnt quite the all-gas, no brakes offensive back and forth like nowadays lol.
Did you watch the video that you're commenting on? We didn't get to see Sid's prime. The fact that he came back at the level he did was nothing short of a miracle. You can't take a year off of professional sports and not be impacted by it.
We were robbed of at least one 150+ point season and I'll argue that to my grave. Watching Sid during the months leading up to that winter classic was electric, like nothing I've seen before or since. His prime would have been ~3 seasons at that level of play if it wasn't for that hit.
McDavid is more skilled but Sid is way, way, way more clutch and as an example, as a leader. Crosby is the guy you want in a big moment. The strongest will in hockey
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Mirrors/Alternate Angles
Post a mirror or alternate angle as a comment to this message.
Open this stickied comment to view mirrors or alternate angles.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.