Like Gretzky did a generation ago, Sidney Crosby's points streak has been a dream for hockey fans.
When I was a younger fan, hockey had Wayne Gretzky in his prime.
There were the obvious accouterments to the nightly magic show: the 200-plus point seasons, the Stanley Cups, a record-setting run of goals one year, and then an assault on the assists record a few years later.
But inside all of that, in a time before highlights travelled across the National Hockey League in cyber-seconds — alas, there might have been 20 Oilers games that weren’t even televised back in the day — there were moments within the grander feats that are tattooed on the memories of anyone who saw them.
They are vignettes within a greater streak, like the night when Gretzky scored five at home against Philadelphia to reach 50 goals in an incredible 39 games. Nobody went to the rink or tuned in that night thinking they would see 50-in-39.
All left knowing they had witnessed something historic.
Or one night in Chicago — Jan. 11, 1984 — when Gretzky’s consecutive games points streak was in jeopardy at 43 games, pointless in 60th minute of a 4-3 win. Chicago pulled goalie Tony Esposito, clearing the stage for Gretzky to magically snare Troy Murray’s clearing pass out of the air with his stick, grab it with his left hand, tossed it to the blade of his Titan and fired home a 25-footer to rescue the streak.
And as a high school kid, watching the media train grow as he chased Phil Esposito’s then-NHL record 76 goals made hockey seem every bit as important as the NFL or MLB. There were Sports Illustrated covers, appearances on soap operas and with Johnny Carson. The NHL went places that only Gretzky could take it, in a time long before today’s hype machine that invents those photo-ops for itself.
Today, the NHL’s portal into mainstream North American sports is Sid Crosby. He has become the one who scores the Olympic winner, the one on whose back we now ride through a modest, but fascinating, 24-game scoring streak.
It’s far from the record 51-gamer Gretzky weaved that distant winter, but for a hockey fan who hasn’t witnessed a streak of this magnitude in a generation (18 years), it’s Dream On as the NHL comes out of hibernation after the Christmas break.
"It’s hard for me to even to imagine," Crosby said on a hastily conducted media conference call Monday. "Somebody watching Wayne Gretzky play every night and kind of expecting that after 41 games, to expect (a streak of) 41. Forty two, etc. To think he did that over the course of 51 games? I can’t even imagine that, really."
Crosby was born on Aug. 7, 1987.
Gretzky transcended hockey in 1983-84, taking a run at Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, falling just shy at 51 games.
At 24 games on Monday, not even at the halfway point, yet already feeling the eyes of the hockey world every night, Crosby feels like he’s got a toe in the waters of history, but admits, "The streak you’re talking about seems like it’s a whole other world away.
"At this point, especially in the last week or two, I feel like there’s been a little more attention to it. But to that level? I don’t feel it’s at that point."
With 30 goals now in 37 games, 50-in-50 seems a stretch for Crosby. His best 13-game binge thus far in 2010-11 has produced 15 goals. He needs 20 in 13 to join that club now.
But wouldn’t it be fun to watch the caravan grow behind Crosby’s Penguins as he took a run at that mark?
Or as a 24-game streak grew to 35, and reached into the low 40s?
"The last couple of weeks I’ve felt a little more attention towards it," he allowed on Monday, "but I can’t imagine what that was like."
Let’s face it: There are no 50-in-39s left in the game today. It’s been coached out of the sport, if not made extinct by the current generation of goaltenders and their still-ridiculous equipment.
So the league must create some must-see moments for Crosby, which is why his Pittsburgh Penguins will play in their second Winter Classic, weather permitting, this weekend, while many teams wait to be invited to their first.
They didn’t have 24/7, or HBO for that matter, in Gretzky’s day, and the NHL didn’t need it.
The state of the game and Gretzky’s permanent residence several stratospheres above it, allowed No. 99 to become his own reality show.
Now Sid is giving us 2010’s version of what we had in the 1980s.
For this generation of hockey fans, why wouldn’t it be every bit as special?
