(For the record, I have no idea what pwned actually means. I just find it funny)
Prior to last night’s Atlantic Division-clinching win over the Flyers (Pensblog recap here), some fool by the name of Darren Dreger wrote a blog post about Sidney Crosby.
Dreger mentioned that Sid doesn’t have the goal-scoring touch of guys like Gretzky, Lemieux…or even Ovechkin. He name drops Geno, which surely calms the Pittsburgh faithful a bit, but levels unusually odd criticism of a 20-year old, reigning league scoring champion who just happened to miss more than 1/3 of the current NHL season.
Let me repeat. Sidney Crosby missed 34% of this season, and still, before last night, managed to score 22 goals. Sid obviously took this to heart when he marked half the team’s tallies in the win against Philly.
Imagine missing 4 1/2 months at your job, then having some dweeb call you out for not putting together as many TPS Reports as the dude next to you who never takes a sick day. If that happened to me, I’d probably come in the next day, fire off a substantial amount of reports, then papercut the idiot with said reports for making foolish claims (no, I don’t work with TPS Reports, but Office Space was the first thing that popped into my head).
So Sid upped his goal total to 24 in 53 games played. Throughout a full season, Crosby would have averaged about 37-39 goals. That number puts him ahead of guys named Alex Kovalev, Eric Staal, Rick Nash and Thomas Vanek. But just because he hasn’t put up freakish numbers like A.O., Geno and Ilya Kovalchuk, Dreger finds the need to complain. Does he want the kid to do everything? Despite missing 1/3 of the season, Sid merely sits in 28th place on the season points list. And that’s 23 points out of 3rd place. His career 1.38 goals per game would squarely put him in contention for a second consecutive run at the points lead had he not missed 28 games.
Oh…and backtrack much? Immediately following the game, Dreger issued a clarification at the bottom of the post. It comes off as sketchy, to say the least:
I stand by the fact I believe Crosby is far more comfortable as a playmaker, but the two goals he scored in a 4-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers helped solidify my point.
Really? Because when I read the post, it seemed like Dreger said:
..when it comes to burying those grade A chances, Crosby gets the A for average.
He says that his two goals were his best two chances, and Sid put them away. Now, if you’re calling a player average, then him scoring on his best two chances does not solidify your point. It actually nullifies your point. Because “great” goal scorers put away their best two chances. “Average” scorers might go 50%.
Please sit down, Darren Dreger, and call out players who warrant criticism. Not a team captain who battled injury for a substantial amount of time, only to score twice in a division-clinching win.
Sidney Crosby > Darren Dreger.
Go Pens!
