DAVID DENOMA
Now, Sidney Crosby, admits, the hard part begins.
One day after he left the hockey world open-mouthed with four points in his first NHL game in almost 11 months, the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar said he knows a lot of work still lies ahead, even if the only effect from the game was a little soreness. His biggest goal is to get back to the form he showed last season, running up 66 points in 41 games before suffering a concussion on Jan. 5, and that is going to take some work.
Some might say four points in one game would suggest you are back on the beam. And after taking a couple of hits early from the New York Islanders, Crosby's speed took over as the Islanders spent the rest of the game unsuccessfully chasing him.
"The first game, you're running on adrenalin," he said Tuesday after a Penguins practice. "As the games go on, I'm going to have to improve and get better. It's only going to happen by playing.
"Every year, you look for ways to be motivated. After going through this I want to get back to where I was last season."
Crosby will get a lot of opportunity to play this week. The Penguins are at home Wednesday against the St. Louis Blues and Friday against the Ottawa Senators before playing a road game Saturday in Montreal against the Canadiens.
Along with Penguins goaltender Marc-André Fleury, defenceman Brooks Orpik is the only player on the team who has been there since Crosby arrived in the NHL in 2005. He smiled when he was asked what is better about Crosby since then.
"He still has a terrible mustache," Orpik said. "I think hockey-wise his consistency is better. That's the toughest thing for a young player, even older guys. You want to get better and better at your consistency because the schedule is so hard on you.
"Before he got hurt last year, that was probably the best we have seen him play consistently. It's a lot to ask but hopefully he picks up right where he left off."
The funny thing is, Orpik said, the better Crosby plays the more his teammates take it for granted. The defenceman recalled a game against the Atlanta Thrashers last season, just before Crosby's injury, in which he scored two goals and added two assists.
"We were going into games expecting him to score two goals because he was playing that well," Orpik said. "It wasn't just offensively, his whole game was complete. [Crosby's comeback]is one game, so we probably shouldn't expect four points out of him every night, but hopefully he keeps building on it."
Crosby said the biggest surprise of his comeback came after the game when he turned on his cellphone to find a long list of congratulatory texts from fellow players around the NHL.
"Yeah, it was pretty amazing," he said. "I didn't really expect a lot of guys throughout the league to text me. This really means a lot. I was kind of caught off guard by that."
There were also lots of players tweeting about Crosby's comeback. The best one came from former teammate Ryan Whitney, who is now with the Edmonton Oilers. After Crosby scored his first goal, less than six minutes into the game, Whitney posted a fake quote from Crosby on Twitter: "Yep, this league's still a joke for me."
"I know a lot of guys follow him [on Twitter]for some good laughs and he provided that here," Crosby said.