For Crosby, All-Star weekend about connecting with others

TORONTO -- Sidney Crosby had a relatively quiet All-Star weekend.

After not being chosen to take part in the revamped 12-player Skills Competition on Friday, Crosby's first taste of action was the three-on-three tournament here Saturday in which he and Team Nathan MacKinnon were eliminated in the first game with a 4-3 shootout loss to Team Connor McDavid. Crosby had two points, a secondary helper on MacKinnon's opening goal and then the primary assist on MacKinnon's goal that put their team up 3-1:

Team McDavid went on to force overtime after scoring two 4-on-3 goals with their goaltender pulled, leading MacKinnon to admit that he maybe could have done a better job of constructing his team in Thursday's player draft.

"Kind of blew the lead there," MacKinnon said. "Not many guys know how to PK on our team. I guess I didn't think of that when I was drafting."

Team MacKinnon had the chance to put the game away before the tying goal. There was a moment when Crosby had the puck and Team McDavid had an empty net. But instead of taking a shot at the empty net, he passed the puck back to his goaltender Jeremy Swayman in an effort to give Swayman a shot at an All-Star goalie goal.

"Couldn't get that empty-netter," Crosby said with a laugh. "Guys were too nice out there. They'll go for it on a Tuesday or Monday, but they don't want to go for it in a three-on-three game in the All-Star Game. Guys have to get a little more greedy in that situation, but it would have been cool to see (Swayman) put one in. You want to try to put a show on for the fans, I'm sure they would have loved to see that."

It was a relatively uneventful All-Star Game for Crosby, but he had a good time. The fun for him came in getting to spend time with his fellow All-Stars -- some he's very familiar with like MacKinnon, and some he didn't know very well at all before this week. Even though Crosby didn't participate in the skills competition Friday, he still filled in as a passer for the one-timer contest and stuck around on the bench for the rest of the competition, chatting up every other player there.

"I think that's part of the fun," Crosby said. "I’ve said before, seeing familiar faces and meeting new guys, it's a rare opportunity to be able to do this. Just getting to see guys, talk and have some laughs. Things get pretty serious here in the second half. Guys go to their respective teams and compete, but when you’re together like this, you try to enjoy it as much as you can.”

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Sidney Crosby talks with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl during Friday's skills competition.

Crosby got to catch up with Justin Bieber, too. Bieber was the celebrity captain of Team Auston Matthews, but suited up in full gear and took warmups with the players. Crosby chatted with Bieber in the locker room and posed for a picture with him on the ice before the game.

ANDI PERELMAN / PENGUINS

Justin Bieber smiles at Sidney Crosby in the locker room on Saturday.

"It was good, I’d met him before years ago," Crosby said of talking with the Canadian superstar. "But it was good to see him out there on the ice with his gear on, taking warmups and being a part of it. That was cool.” 

The All-Star Game is a nice break for players during the season, but it was hardly a true break for Crosby. While many players were off laying on a beach, Crosby was putting in work. Not just here at the All-Star game, but on his own, on the ice in the mountains. Crosby took his gear with him to Montana, secured ice and skated alone at the outdoor Big Sky Ice Rink, where he was caught on video by a fan. 

"It was good," Crosby said of that skate with a grin. "I mean, I thought (the rink) was relatively empty, not empty enough. It's just great to get away. As you get older, you appreciate that time off a little bit more."

For MacKinnon, who knows Crosby better than any other All-Star here, he wasn't surprised at all to see that Crosby was training out west before joining the rest of the All-Stars here in Toronto.

“No, no, I'm not too surprised," MacKinnon said. "Yeah, he loves the game and I think he skates most breaks, wherever he’s at, he likes to touch the ice. You’d have to ask him, but it makes him feel good and that's just the way it is.”

The weekend wrapped up with Team Matthews winning the tournament and Matthews himself winning MVP in front of his hometown crowd. Crosby and the other players departed Toronto shortly after -- they had to, the season picks back up quickly. The Penguins are scheduled to practice back at the Lemieux Complex on Sunday and are gearing up for a playoff push in the second half of the season. The Penguins re-enter the season schedule seven points back of the Red Wings for the last wild card spot, but with a whopping four games in hand.

“I think like any team, everyone's going to be playing a lot of hockey here the next couple of months," Crosby said. "So, consistency is big. If we can string some (wins) together here and get hot, you’re playing a lot of games. For the teams that can do that, it’ll be a big push.”

MORE ALL-STAR THOUGHTS

• Toronto put on a good event, and the fans were more into it than I'd seen in recent years. But the lack of intensity and effort that we've seen this event start to take on over the years was still there, despite the league's attempts to fix that. The skills competition was reduced to a 12-player event with most players taking on each skill, earning points to advance to further rounds. It culminated in an obstacle course, with McDavid winning that and the $1 million prize the league added to incentivize players. 

In some ways, the skills competition was better. That final obstacle course was definitely exciting. But it got worse in other ways. Those 12 players came from only eight teams, so for the 24 other fanbases hoping to see their player take part, they were out of luck. Some of the events were snoozers, like the passing challenge that had players skating up ice and "passing" to different targets along the boards, earning points for each target they hit.

That $1 million prize didn't do much to incentivize a player who just didn't want to be doing it, like Nikita Kucherov:

I saw various comments complaining about Kucherov and calling what he did an "embarrassment," but I didn't agree. I thought it was a little funny, but more so evidence that the NHL hasn't quite figured out how to make this thing very good. Figure out how to run this event in a way that players don't want to make a joke of it.

The skills competition was better than last year, but that was a low bar to clear. The NHL butchered the event last year with a bizarre format that had events getting halfway done before moving onto the next one and circling back around to unfinished events. 

• I thought the return of the player draft was fun. Some teams like Vancouver and Toronto having so many guys here kind of took a little fun out of it, since you knew their captains were going to try to pick their teammates.

• The NHL had a legitimately good get with the musical performer for this year's game, Tate McRae. She might not have been a pick popular with the older crowd, but she's huge right now with the younger crowd and is big on social media and probably did a lot to draw that audience in. I know my teenage cousin tuned in just for her and was texting me asking me to bring him back some of the merch she had in the store there. 

• One of the best parts of the weekend was the joint press conference between Michael Bublé and Will Arnett, two of the celebrity captains here. They were both really funny, from Arnett pretending to break down in tears talking about how much the opportunity mean to him, to Bublé somehow taking a question about fantasy hockey and turning it into a weird tangent about being on mushrooms. It's the kind of silly thing that definitely drew some outside attention to the event. It was nice of the NHL to give Bublé one last thing to do before he gets put away again until next Christmas:

• The award for worst showing of the weekend goes to Gary Bettman, who managed to make himself look even worse than Kucherov. He held a press conference on Friday and obviously a big topic of discussion was the 2018 Canadian World Junior team sexual assault case and charges against Carter Hart of the Flyers, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote of the Devils, Dillon Dube of the Flames and former NHL player and Senators property Alex Formenton. Robyn Doolittle, an investigative reporter with Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper, has covered the case extensively. She asked a few related questions in a row and Bettman got snippy with her, asking, “Are we having a personal conversation? Should we open the floor to others?” Here is the full press conference, with the interaction coming around 35:50:

• Frank Seravalli of the Daily Faceoff recorded a podcast on Friday and ripped Crosby for not being at the draft/media day and skating in Montana, calling it "garbage" and saying that it drives him "absolutely insane." Seravalli went on to criticize Crosby for not being at last year's media day either, saying that Crosby cited "plane issues," and said that the only reason he wasn't getting more flak was because he was Sidney Crosby:

A couple thoughts on this one. For one, Crosby was very much in Florida on time for the All-Star media day last year but didn't attend because he was doing the pre-filmed dunk challenge for the skills competition immediately before. So, I'm not sure where the "plane issues" thing is coming from. If I remember correctly, the "plane issues" was actually the Bruins' excuse, after every one of their players and the coach missed media day. In both cases -- this year and last year -- Crosby simply came to the skills competition day early and held a separate press conference. Crosby did a number of other interviews that day for various TV networks and stuck around on the ice for the entirety of the skills competition that he wasn't even participating in. 

It's not that Crosby isn't getting flack because he's Crosby. People like Seravalli only care and notice when he's missing because he's Crosby, and think he owes everyone something. If it ended up being someone like Boone Jenner (no offense to Jenner, he's just a Blue Jacket) missing, Seravalli wouldn't be ripping him on his podcast because he probably wouldn't notice or care. Crosby and Alex Ovechkin carried the league on their backs early in their careers with the amount of attention they got and media obligations they had as the league was coming out of the 2004-05 lockout. It's OK if Crosby isn't the center of attention at every single league event now in his mid-30s.

• That's a wrap on this All-Star weekend. There won't be one next season, as the NHL kicks off a new tournament called the "4 Nations Face-Off," a league-run tournament between Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland. As the NHL returns to the Olympics in 2026 and 2030, the 4 Nations Face-Off will eventually settle into a cycle of running every four years opposite the Olympic schedule (2028, 2032, etc.). The NHL plans to skip the All-Star Game in 4 Nations Face-Off years, but use it as a "send off" in Olympic years. The tournament seems like it will be a nice change of pace from the usual All-Star events, but settling on just four countries seems shortsighted. Russia will presumably be in good standing in international play one day, and there are a number of players from other countries -- like Czechia's David Pastrnak, Slovenia's Anze Kopitar, Germany's Leon Draisaitl and Moritz Seider, who get left out entirely. Bettman was asked Friday how they settled on four countries and can justify leaving off some of the league's stars, and had a bit of a snarky response, saying, "We either do all or nothing," seemingly forgetting his own World Cup of Hockey tournament from 2016 that featured a Team Europe, comprised of players from a variety of countries who didn't have their own spot in the tournament.