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deferred salary he was owed with it, he somewhat reluctantly became an owner and today, with a brand-new rink for his team, seems at ease in his new life.
    Lemieux sat on a stool after the shinny match, microphone in hand, and talked about whatever subject was raised. He was asked about Crosby, the youngster Lemieux took into his own home and who is now on his own, captain of the 2009 Stanley Cup champion Penguins and leading scorer in the NHL this season.
    â€œIncredible,” Lemieux said. As for the twenty-five-game scoring streak Crosby recently put up, incredible doesn’t even begin to measure it. “It’s not the same as it was twenty years ago,” Lemieux said in considering his own remarkable forty-six-game streak of 1989–90. “What he’s doing now is much more impressive than anything I did. It’s tougher to dominate the way the league is today.”
    He then talked about how the rivalry he had with Gretzky might compare to all the current talk concerning Crosby and Ovechkin. Hard to say for sure, he mused, as the game has changed so dramatically, particularly in terms of overall speed and in the skating ability of today’s defence. Gretzky, he said, liked to hold the puck and had a signature play of curling back with it to buy a little extra time. “You can’t do that anymore,” he said.
    He said nothing of his own style. He didn’t need to. As former teammate Luc Robitaille once put it, “A fire hydrant could score forty goals with him.”
    Ovechkin, Lemieux said, has an extraordinary physical presence and, of course, that “shot.” Crosby, on the other hand, is “more controlling” out there, seeking out pucks and using incredible speed and strength to create opportunities in a game that, today, seems all about speed.
    â€œTwo different styles,” he said, “two different eras.”
    But still the same game—and always better for a top-notch rivalry. Gretzky and Lemieux. Crosby and Ovechkin. Someone else tomorrow …
    In the real game that followed, Crosby was hit by Washington’s David Steckel—perhaps by accident, as Steckel maintained—and likely suffered the concussion that was exacerbated a few days later when hit by Tampa Bay Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman. The absence of Crosby from the game begat a debate over headshots that would come to dominate the NHL’s 2010–11 season. When a brawl broke out between the Penguins and the New York Islanders in February, Lemieux spoke out, calling the game “a travesty” and saying if such action reflected the state of the NHL, he needed “to rethink whether I want to be a part of it.” Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero became one of the strongest advocates for cleaning up headshots and, later in the year, when the NHL suspended Penguins forward Matt Cooke for the remainder of the season and the first round of the playoffs for just such a hit, the Penguins not only accepted the suspension but applauded it
.
GOING IT ALONE: MATS SUNDIN
(
The Globe and Mail
, February 5, 2007)
    H e may be the loneliest star the game has known. His name links with no other player, not even with any very special team. Lemieux and Jagr. Hull and Mikita. Lindsay and Howe. Sittler and McDonald. But unlike them, his name automatically rings no other bell.
    Esposito had Orr back on the blueline. Gretzky found himself maturing with Messier, Coffey, Kurri, Fuhr. Lafleur had Lemaire and Shutt and the best defence in all of hockey to feed up the puck. Henri Richard was so lucky that, when he retired, he found he had more Stanley Cup rings than fingers.
    Even today there are combinations people speak of in some awe: Lecavalier and St. Louis, Spezza and Heatley, Crosby when he is on the power play with Malkin.
    But no name has ever connected for long with that of Mats Sundin. And it begs the question: How good was—and, to a degree, still is—the captain