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Sidney Crosby: Keeping Pens' hopes alive

There are marathons, there are ultra-marathons and then there are the NHL play-offs. And, for the last ice-hockey team left standing and holding the Stanley Cup come early June, they can truly proclaim themselves to be America's hardmen.

For this is a story of gruelling hardship, legendary match-ups, historic rivalries - and octopuses; LOTS of octopuses. Let's start first with the brutal challenge facing the 16 teams aiming to be the best of the best.

Just to get to this stage, the sweet 16 have had to grind their way through 82 regular season games; that's 82 hours - plus various overtimes and shoot-outs - of bone-crunching, sinew-tearing hockey (and it is just 'hockey' in America; the 'ice' is superfluous as there is no tradition of 'field' hockey).

That incredible, six-month slug-fest eliminates just 14 of the 30 NHL teams, and leaves the survivors looking at another two full months of head-to-head scrapping to get to the top of the heap and embrace Lord Stanley's Mug (the trophy, that is, not any part of the former Governor General of Canada).

Each play-off round consists of a best-of-seven series to decide the winner, which means the 16 hopefuls may end up playing another 21 games merely to reach the Cup series itself, and another seven-game battle.

Just considering all the trials and tribulations ahead for the would-be Stanley duellists is enough to wear you out, let alone stepping out in the ice for upwards of 21 hours of combat.

And make no mistake, hockey is among the most vicious and demanding of all the major sports, despite the thick layers of padding, helmets and gloves. Most teams typically order up gallons of ice for their players to wallow in after games, and there are usually stitches aplenty as well.

Toughness

We have already seen one player this season - Florida's Richard Zednik - put in intensive care after having his neck sliced open by an errant skate (in a freak accident with a team-mate), and the occasional claret addition to the ice is by no means unusual.

It all goes to highlight how America's oldest sporting competition sorts out the men from the boys as, to lay claim to the Stanley Cup (as donated by Lord Stanley of Preston way back in 1892), players have to go well beyond just the pain barrier and scale the heights of mental toughness as well.

By a sporting curiosity, this is the only competition of America's major sports that has kept its original trophy and which merely adds the name of the latest champion to its epic 116-year roll call of fame, so that it is now 3ft high and weighs just over 2½stone.

By another coincidence, the very first winners were from Montreal (the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association) and the league's oldest-surviving team, the Montreal Canadiens - formed in 1909 - are many people's favourites to bring the Cup back to Canada for the first time in 15 years (a lifetime to fans of the Habs, as they are known - short for Les Habitants; it all gets very French in these parts).

The long and illustrious history of the Cup is largely overlooked, however, as the media focuses on the actual meat of this year's event - whether 'Sid the Kid' can carry the mighty Pittsburgh Penguins to their first title since back-to-back triumphs in 1991 and '92.

Sid is otherwise known as Sidney Crosby, 20, the baby-faced centre who has almost single-handedly revived the fortunes of the Pens with a scoring blitz that has played to packed arenas virtually everywhere Pittsburgh have been this season.

This one-man Sid-sation ensured his team not only qualified for the play-offs but grabbed the No 2 seed in the Eastern Conference behind Montreal, with the prospect of a mouth-watering showdown if both teams live up to expectations.

Crosby has already been compared to NHL greats like Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky but he needs to start putting some play-off notches on his belt to go with some of his individual accolades, like being the youngest player in league history to win the scoring title (in 2006) and the only teenager to claim the Hart Trophy as Most Valuable Player.

The Penguins made a pretty impressive start to their quest for hockey's Holy Grail (yes, they really do call it that), crushing Ottawa 4-0 in their play-off opener, the first of a two-day blitz of eight games that lead off this year's shootout. In fact, they jumped into a 2-0 lead while I was writing the first few pars of this feature!

Expectation

The team most likely to be waiting for the winner of the much-anticipated Canadiens-Penguins match-up is the Detroit Red Wings, the Red Machine who have once again piled up the best regular-season record in the NHL.

Living just down the road from Hockeytown, as Detroit is inevitably known at this time of year, I can attest to the huge weight of expectation on the Wings' shoulders - along with the truly bizarre custom of throwing an octopus (or six) on the ice for good luck before a playoff game.

I'm not making this up, honest. Back in 1952, two Detroit market stall-holders advocated the octopus as a good-luck symbol as its eight legs indicated the number of play-off wins necessary to claim the Cup way back then. Fans took the idea to heart and octopi flooded the ice prior to each play-off outing - the record was 36 in 1995, including a 30-pounder! Now it is 16 wins, hence two (stuffed, artificial) octopi hang from the rafters at home games.

Standing in the Red Wings' way will surely be the in-form San Jose Sharks, although last year's champs Anaheim may still have something to say about that. The no-nonsense Ducks (having dropped the 'Mighty' from their name two years ago) can, at times, make the legendary Wimbledon line-up of the 1980s look like one of football's most cultured teams, but they are tough cusses to beat at play-off time.

Of course, the best-possible Stanley Cup scenario is one that will have Liverpool fans seething at the very thought. Because, if the Canadiens make it through to the Final and the Dallas Stars do likewise - making light of their No 5 seeding - it will set up a delicious meeting of owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks.

And there could be as many punches thrown in the directors' box as on the ice! Watch this space......