Inside Sidney Crosby’s evolution into Captain Canada
A fter all this time, Sidney Crosby still seems to be something of an enigma. He’s been so dominant, so excellent, so stoic, for so long, it can be difficult to see the man beneath the myth. For certain generations, he simply is the game —as foundational to hockey as white ice lined blue and red. He’s history incarnate.
But Kris Letang knows the man. He’s been there from the beginning, witnessed every step of the journey in Pittsburgh, and might understand No. 87 better than anyone who’s ever skated alongside him. When the defender considers who Crosby is, truly,he thinks back to their run to the Stanley Cup summit in the spring of 2016, of all the captain did behind the scenes, away from the cameras, to get them there.
It had taken seven years for the Penguins to claw their way back to the mountaintop. After a five-game first-round battle with the rival New York Rangers, they’d navigated a hard-fought six-game series with the Washington Capitals, led by No. 87’s old foe, Alex Ovechkin. More than a few times, it nearly went sideways. But Crosby kept them pointed forward, kept his hands on the tiller.
“On the bench, he has a calming effect; on the ice, also. Between periods, between games, he’s trying to understand everybody’s needs,” Letang says. “You know, everybody is different. It’s always hard to know what a team needs, because there’s so many individuals. But Sid will sit down and try to understand those things and make the right decisions for his teammates. He’ll sit down with different guys at different moments, if they’re not having a good series or a good game, and he’ll work with those guys.”
When they outlasted the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games to take the East, it set up a date with a star-studded San Jose Sharks squad in the Stanley Cup Final. Pittsburgh took narrow wins in Games 1 and 2, fell in Game 3, fought back in Game 4. Then, with a chance to close out the series at home in Game 5— to lift the Cup in front of the Penguins faithful, after winning their first one on the road in ‘09 — they got dropped, sending the series back to California.
It was a deflating turn. And Crosby could feel that his club’s blue-line leader needed some support, a reminder that another chance to come through for their city was looming.
“You know, we were pretty down about not having closed out Game 5 at home,” Letang remembers. “Before we went to Game 6, we sat down together, and he told me we were going to connect for a big moment for the series.”
Game 6 arrived and it was another nailbiter. Goals were hard to come by. But midway through the tilt, with the score knotted at 1-1, Letang found his opportunity.
The puck came to him at the point, a runway of open ice in front of him. With little time to think, he made a split-second decision to go all-in for the glory. He faked a slapshot, freezing an oncoming Joe Pavelski, then spun past the Sharks sniper and sprinted down the left wing. Joe Thornton rushed at him, a stick outstretched to poke the puck away. Letang toe-dragged around him, sweeping the puck to his backhand with a flourish before flying by defender Roman Polak. Rounding the back of the cage, he flipped the puck into the mess of bodies at the netfront. It bounced off a skate, a leg, and slid towards the corner.
“On the bench, he has a calming effect; on the ice, also. Between periods, between games, he’s trying to understand everybody’s needs.”
Crosby arrived, picking the puck out of the pile. The captain shuffled around the back of the net, tracing No. 58’s route. Before the Sharks spotted Letang, Crosby wired a pass in his direction. The blue-liner connected for the one-timer. It soared past netminder Martin Jones and fluttered the twine.
Letang’s goal ultimately stood as the game-winner. The Cup-clincher. A big moment, just like the captain had predicted.
“It was a pretty cool moment between me and him,” Letang says. “You know, it’s kind of having that vision, of being positive— ‘You’re going to forget the game that you just lost, and you’re turning the page.’
“‘And you’re going forward.’”
Now, Crosby will go forward once more, this time to Milan. After 12 long years, No. 87 returns to the Olympic stage, taking that prophetic optimism back to the pinnacle of international hockey. Much has been said about the impact he could have for his country on the ice. But talk to those who’ve shared a locker room with Crosby, who’ve sat beside him on a bench, followed his lead in practice, received a word of encouragement from him when it was needed most, and it becomes clear where the future Hall of Famer’s greatest impact may come. After two decades of pushing teams to greatness, after three Stanley Cups in black-and-gold and six gold medals in red-and-white, No. 87 has blossomed into one of the great leaders in the game’s history. But there’s much about the way Crosby leads a team that those outside the locker room don’t see.
As he captains Canada into the 2026 Olympic Games, this is the story of how Crosby evolved into a leader fit for this moment, as told by the teammates who’ve been there for the journey.
L etang had squared off with Crosby in the QMJHL before they met in Pittsburgh. The first time they teamed up was at their first NHL training camp, in late 2005. They were teenagers, thrown into the big leagues, skating around with Hall of Famers. Still, somehow, No. 87 seemed to cut a leading figure.
“You could tell right away he was a lot more mature than a guy like me, [who was] the same age,” Letang says. “You saw right away he was down to earth, really focused on being the hockey player that he is today. Just trying to be better every single day.”
Letang joined the Penguins full-time in 2007-08, after playing out the rest of his junior career. It was Crosby’s third season in Pittsburgh. They were 20 years old. No. 87 had just been named captain, fresh off of a sophomore campaign that netted him his first MVP nod and first scoring title. Even with seasoned veterans, future Hall of Famers, like Gary Roberts and Mark Recchi in the room, the young captain wasn’t afraid to step out front and lead.
“When we started our first year together, he’s a guy that, it didn’t really matter how young he was, he wanted to make sure everybody around him was having a good time, felt comfortable, was included, that we were part of a team and identity,” Letang says. “Right away that was something that we saw. Right from the start, you could tell he wanted everybody to be together. Even if he was a young guy on an older team, he was the leader.”
Still, Crosby also knew the importance of earning his stripes.
“He was the young, sensational player coming into the league, the Next One, but he also wanted to go step-by-step,” Letang says. “Being a rookie, enjoying that rookie season. You know, he enjoyed having the older guys giving him a hard time. He wanted to do those steps. His entire life, he played with older guys, because he was so good he was bumped up at every level, and it was the same thing in the NHL. He wanted to embrace those things.
“For him, the important thing was he always wanted to be around the guys. He always wanted to have team dinners. If he saw some guys that were more on their own, he would bring them in. Right away, the older guys, they respected a guy like that, you know? You respect a guy that is always willing to do little things for everybody around them.”
By the time Mark Letestu arrived in Pittsburgh as a rookie a couple years later, Crosby had already blossomed into the Next One. He’d led the Penguins to back-to-back Cup Finals and just claimed his first championship. He was in full flight, the undeniable face of the game. And Letestu, who arrived with little fanfare as an undrafted college hockey alum, showed up understandably nervy. Then he met the captain.
“He was always very patient with me, which, now looking back as somebody that had a career, he didn’t always have to be,” says Letestu. “You know, he’s understanding of the fact that not everybody sees the game the way he does or is able to execute at the level he has. Playing with somebody that good and knowing where I came from as a hockey player, at times you feel like you don’t belong.
“But he had a way of making you feel like you were part of it, of being patient and understanding maybe that the game isn’t as easy for everybody as it is for him.”
A twist of fate pushed Letestu and Crosby together for one of the most trying stretches of the captain’s career. Midway through their first season as teammates, Crosby endured a pair of devastating concussions in back-to-back games, derailing what was on track to be one of his most prolific seasons, threatening to derail his career altogether.
“I had knee surgery in the year he was going through that well-documented concussion he experienced at the Winter Classic,” Letestu says. “To be together, injured, going through the rehab skates, seeing how diligently he worked through his injury, and, you know, having one-on-one time there to see how he worked at his game — as a young player, those experiences, being next to him and seeing the way he works, were invaluable.”
Ask anyone in No. 87’s orbit about the catalyst for his greatness and you immediately start a countdown to the words ‘work ethic.’ For all he does for his teammates off the ice, there’s little doubt Crosby’s greatest impact comes from the example he sets, from his relentless approach to honing his craft.
“Somewhere I fell short as a young player was practice habits,” Letestu says. “It’s something I had to learn. And you know, your coaches can tell you as much as they want, but to actually see it firsthand — a player like Sid, that goes about his business and practices a certain way, somebody that’s accomplished, a Cup champion, the face of the league. He’s always evolving. He’s always trying to get better. It’s so valuable to see the best player in the world do it —it’s almost inexcusable, as a teammate, to not follow suit.
“That’s what makes him special, beyond just the goals and assists and the accolades. It’s how he pushes the people around him to be a better version of themselves.”
It’s not just that Crosby works hard in the sessions, though. It’s his ability to bring everyone else along with him. Andy O’Brien’s had a front-row seat to that side of Crosby’s career for decades, working as his personal strength and conditioning coach since the centreman was 14 years old.
“When I’ve seen him with teammates, whether it’s people that he’s training with or whether it’s players on his team, his ability to just be very present with them and give them time and develop this kind of organic relationship where they enjoy training together and working together, that team atmosphere around him is quite impressive,” O’Brien says. “It’s sort of amazing how, when you have someone who is a player that everyone else idolizes and other players think so highly of, but that player is really kind and attentive to other people, how that generates this environment and this culture that lends itself to success.
“I’ve seen this in the off-season, where if you have a young player that comes and trains with him,his ability to impact that player positively is incredible to watch. And I don’t even know if he’s purposely trying to do it. He’s just being himself. But his ability to make that player feel like whatever it is that they’re doing, they’re doing it together, that that player’s success is Sid’s success and vice versa — he really just has this great leadership capacity. I don’t even think it’s conscious. I think it’s just part of who he is.”
It’s the balance, too, of who he is on the ice and who he is off it, says Bryan Rust, who’s spent the majority of the past 12 seasons on Crosby’s wing.
“Coming into the league, you don’t really know what to expect. You don’t know what’s going to happen, especially with the older guys, how it’s all going to go. But from the minute you step in the locker room, Sid treats everybody like gold,” Rust says. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve played 1,500 games in the league or you’ve been there for one day, if you’re the GM or if you clean the locker room, he treats everybody extremely well. It makes everybody a little bit more comfortable, makes everybody feel more at home.”
It isn’t anything extravagant that brings new teammates into the fold —it’s just simple kindness, just taking the time.
“You know, whether it was inviting us to go to dinner on the road or giving us spots to go eat in Pittsburgh, or just always making casual small talk —just to check in and see how we were doing, what we do in our life, things outside of hockey,” Rust says, “it just made us guys who were new, especially us young guys, feel more comfortable.”
In his second campaign in Pittsburgh, Rust felt the full weight of Crosby’s command of the Penguins’ fate, when No. 87 led them on the march to the Cup Final that ended with he and Letang authoring that bit of title-clinching magic. For Rust, there was no single moment of wisdom imparted by the captain that sticks out from that run —rather, it was simply watching the poise with which Crosby navigated the post-season maelstrom.
“That’s what makes him special, beyond just the goals and assists and the accolades. It’s how he pushes the people around him to be a better version of themselves.”
“It was just how he approached every day. His ability to continue to stay in the moment and be positive and push forward,” Rust says. “The playoffs are a rollercoaster — you win one game, everybody’s planning the parade; you lose a game, everybody’s saying, ‘These guys are awful, tear it down in the off-season.’ So, his ability to keep not only himself but the guys around him in check, by the way he carried himself, the way he composed himself, how he was able to work through that — I think that made everybody around him take a deep breath and know that, ‘Hey, things aren’t over ‘til they’re over, good or bad.’”
They won it all that year, of course. The next year, too. Crosby was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy at the conclusion of both runs. But even as the veteran continued to stack hardware, his approach to bringing the group along remained unchanged.
“There’s always conversations being had on the ice, what we saw here and there — and he never has the attitude of, the way he saw it is definitely the way that it should be. He’s also trying to learn, he’s also trying to get better, and he’s getting everybody’s feedback as well,” Rust says.
“He helped me a lot. Obviously, you see his work ethic, you learn from the way he comes to the rink every day. He works hard. He doesn’t take anything for granted.”
L ike all of the game’s greats, Crosby’s career has always run on twin tracks. As he’s lifted the Penguins from lottery mainstay to perennial champs, he’s been called to lead Team Canada to glory, too.
Before he started hanging banners in Pittsburgh, Crosby set his sights on Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was there, six months before the Penguins brought him to town with that franchise-altering first-overall selection, that a 17-year-old No. 87 won his first gold medal for Canada, donning the maple leaf at the 2005 World Junior Championship.
Even back then, there was something particular about the Nova Scotian phenom’s ability to lead.
“You could see the presence that he had when he was in the dressing room,” says Corey Perry, who suited up on a line with Crosby and Patrice Bergeron at that tournament. “You know, he was always a guy that you could talk to. He was never shy. He’s not a loud person, but you could talk to him. And you could see what type of player and person he really was — he would do anything for anybody.”
Crosby was the youngest member of that ’05 squad, a group stocked with six future NHL captains, soon-to-be vaunted leaders like Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, and Shea Weber. Still, the 17-year-old managed to establish himself in the room.
“You knew there was something special,” Perry says. “It doesn’t matter how old you are in this game, if you have that presence about you, and that aura around you, you’re going to have some followers.”
A half-decade after that run in Grand Forks, Crosby and Perry reunited for their first turn on the Olympic stage, the Games coming to Vancouver.
Once again, No. 87 entered the tournament as one of the youngest members of the squad, only Drew Doughty and Jonathan Toews junior to the then-22-year-old. Though he already had a Stanley Cup ring in the bag, with hardened veterans Scott Niedermayer and Chris
