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BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published March 3, 2011

February has come and gone without the reemergence of a familiar face: Sidney Crosby. After sustaining a hit to the head during the Winter Classic and another in the following game, Crosby has been out for 22 games with a concussion. But if Crosby has been missing from the ice, he certainly has not been missing from the papers. Journalists have been lamenting the loss of Crosby almost as much as Crosby himself, painting bleak pictures of untouched gear left hanging in the locker room and a pale Crosby not able to spend time in the sun. Bruce Arther of the National Post summed up the general feelings of the press on the subject with the headline “NHL should be terrified of threat to Crosby.”

Should the NHL feel bad for Crosby? Sure. Should the Penguins be worried about contending for the Stanley Cup without him? Definitely. But terrified? That may be pushing it. Despite the National Post’s hailing of Crosby as the only player this season to be able to “transcend the league,” Crosby is still just one player. Yes, he has been one of the best players on the ice these past few seasons, but the NHL existed long before Crosby graced it with his presence, and will survive after he has stopped playing, whenever that day may be (which, of course, we all hope is after a long and healthy career). While I feel for Crosby and the unfortunate situation he is in, the press has been treating his injury like hockey Armageddon and it is uncalled for. To prove it, here are just a few of the many reasons why hockey will outlive Sidney Crosby.

They have harnessed the power of the Internet

More so than athletes in any other sport, hockey players have figured out how to use the Internet to their advantage. Players and fans alike have used blogs, tweets and YouTube videos to promote themselves and the teams they play for. It may have league executives and agents scrambling to keep players in check, but Twitter has done more to bring in young fans than even Crosby has. Players keep finding new ways to use this social medium, and not just off the ice. In an incident that must have made league officials cringe earlier this season, St. Louis Blues enforcer Cam Janssen challenged Dallas Stars’ Krys Barch via Twitter to a fight the next time they met, which Barch quickly accepted. It is unclear how this online challenge fits with the league’s penalty for instigating fights, but it is sure to sell a few tickets to the next match between these two teams.

The best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) use of Twitter, however, has to go to the Phoenix Coyotes’ Paul Bissonnettee, better known online as BizNasty. BizNasty’s crude and ridiculous updates are the source of more gossip than his play will ever produce. Sometimes in the form of poetry (“packing for Arizona. Passport, check. Money and credit cards, check. Speeeeeeedo, never leave home without it. Wish it had pockets”), or sometimes photography (notably, his odd obsession with posting photos of the homeless men he comes across), BizNasty’s tweets are always works of art. Unfortunately, his account was temporarily closed after a reference to Ilya Kovalchuk as a communist. But don’t worry; BizNasty is back to his usual shenanigans with BizNasty2point0.
But even more so than their use of Twitter, hockey players have captured the undying love of fans via Youtube. Take, for example, the Belfast Giants, a member of the Elite Ice Hockey League in the UK. To encourage fans to come out to their post-holiday games, the players taped a music video to Maria Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which featured the team lip syncing and performing a choreographed dance that was later posted on YouTube. Watch it; you’ll seriously consider buying a ticket to the UK to see them in person.

The up and comers

It’s not just the current NHLers that are making waves on the Internet, but also the rookies and next generation of hockey talent. Oilers’ rookie Linus Omark stirred up some controversy this past December when in his first NHL game he scored the winning shootout goal with a spin-o-rama that left veterans on the losing Tampa Bay team a little annoyed. While many called it disrespectful and showy, this one move exhilarated fans, not to mention that the sensation it caused on the Internet couldn’t have hurt the Oilers’ ticket sales. Rookies that are pushing the boundaries of conventional hockey may upset some of the older players who are set in their ways, but it could also bring in new fans and revive the old ones.

Canada

No, seriously. Canada will ensure that Crosby will be able to watch hockey games from his retirement home; I guarantee it. While the majority of the teams in the NHL are located in the US, the majority of the players are Canadian and I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the fans are too. Hockey in Canada is just short of a religion, so there is no way that Canadians will allow hockey to end because one player gets hurt, even if it is one of their very own (that’s right, Crosby is Canadian). In fact, Canadians only want the league to grow larger. Quebec hockey fans want an NHL team back in their city so bad, that they actually went and tried to kidnap one.

Ok, maybe not kidnap, but it was close.

In December, fans calling themselves Nordiques Nation, after the team that used to be in Quebec, gathered over 1,000 people and bused them down to a game between the Islanders and the Thrashers, two NHL teams with the lowest attendance records, in an attempt to prove to the NHL Commissioner that they were worthy of a team. On top of this show of enthusiasm, the city has raised over $310 million dollars to build a new arena for a team that doesn’t even exist yet.

If they are willing to go to such lengths to add another Canadian team to the league, I can’t imagine what they would do if the entire league was actually in danger.

Down but not out

And let’s not forget that Sidney Crosby is not the first superstar to dominate the NHL; I’m pretty sure Wayne Gretzky would have something to say about that. Nicknamed “the Great One,” Gretzky set most of the records Crosby is going to spend his career chasing. It takes quite the player to have your jersey number retired by every team in the NHL. When he stopped playing, many mourned what they felt was the end of an era. But just because he wasn’t lacing up, didn’t mean that Gretzky was out of hockey altogether.

Over the years he has remained a huge part of the NHL, as a coach and part owner of the Phoenix Coyotes and as a mentor to up and coming players. Just as Gretzky did, I’m sure Crosby will find a way to stay involved in hockey long after he stops putting on a uniform.

Hockey may be missing one of its superstars at the moment, but that is no reason to break into the emergency supplies. It’s only a matter of time before Crosby is back on the ice, but even if that takes longer than expected, hockey will go on. It takes more than one player to bring down the sport Urban Dictionary defines as, “The best and most entertaining sport out there. Period.”

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