Quotes from Shawna Richer

As well, the Penguins arranged for Sidney to open a bank account in Pittsburgh. He had been keeping his nhl paycheques in his sock drawer.

The morning skate was a game-day ritual dating back to the seventies, introduced in North America by the Russians, and used as an attendance taking to make sure players who may have been out carousing the night before finished sweating the alcohol out of their system before the game.

Renaud Lavoie, a reporter with rds, the French-language sports network, said he was amazed by how quickly Crosby learned French and that he continued to practise it.

He would wear the ornery, stick-wielding Penguin on his chest and carry the expectations for saving hockey on his shoulders.

in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains, home of the Baby Penguins, their American Hockey League farm team.

Here in Wilkes-Barre, even though training camp was a formality when it came to him being named to the roster, he stuck to his rule, refusing even to sign a miniature sweater sized for a teddy bear.

Thrashers coach Bob Hartley said it was Crosby's emotion that made him so dangerous. "He can beat you so many ways.

The thing I noticed immediately about Crosby the first time I saw him in the Penguins' dressing room that September was his thighs. They were the circumference of good-sized tree trunks.

It was the same with his glutes, substantial and strong and set high to power what often appeared to be an effortless skating stride.

Before I even saw him in shorts, I knew his legs would probably be like tree trunks. When I finally saw them, I was like, 'Whoa!

He's a sponge. His eyes are wide open. You can see him absorbing his surroundings, feeding off everything that's going on. No matter how good you get, you can never stop learning. He gets that. It's

Often Crosby would head out into the backyard "to goof around" or play video games and sing karaoke with them. The kids were always trying to wrestle with him. But Crosby loved it. "I like a busy house," he said. It also gave his life, which

In the second period, he hit the crossbar, and the fans chanted in singsong, "Overrated!" and "Parise's better!

In particularly trying times, Crosby would look to a handful of motivational sayings and poems he had collected over the years. They helped him focus his goals. Some of them hung on his bedroom wall at the Lemieux house, given to him by family and close friends. He modelled himself after his favourite, from Paul "Bear" Bryant: It's not the will to win that matters, everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters.

He had looked up at the scoreboard to watch the replay, and a video of the highlights from his season that Billy Wareham, the team videographer, made the previous day in case Crosby hit 100. It was set to the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil," a fitting, understated choice.

Whenever a ball of tape or an empty water bottle didn't land in the waste basket, Crosby would throw it again and again until he sunk it. He never gave up until he succeeded, even when it came to tossing out the garbage.

He grew up never letting his mother wash his hockey equipment, preferring instead to air it outdoors, because he loved the smell so much.

When the Penguins arrived on Sunday from Boston, he wandered around Times Square with some of his teammates. He couldn't get over the lights and noise that never ceased. "It's a lot bigger than Cole Harbour," he said.

Usually conducted in his long athletic underwear and bare feet, he often curled his toes up as if making a fist and held the position tensely the whole time he was talking to us.

They participated in buddy drills – pulling a Jeep out of a hole and carrying each other – that were designed to build a team chemistry that had been lacking so often in the previous season.

A rookie centre from Saskatoon, "Endo" was as laidback as they come, kind of the team's Spicoli.