Craig Patrick, the Pens former GM who was on the watch the day in 2005 that Crosby was drafted, and Ray Shero, named the new GM roughly one year later, combined to surround Crosby with some brilliant talent, too. Young stud draft picks Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal also fit easily on a Top 10 list of young NHL talent. Both were drafted in the Patrick regime.

Shero this summer brought in free agent veteran Petr Sykora to add to the potent scoring corps. If Shero can keep some cap room available, Pittsburgh is going to be a popular UFA destination for the next 10 years or more. Shero shrewdly locked up Crosby this past summer for the next five years on a new deal worth an average $8.7 million. Born 8-7-87, Crosby also wears sweater No. 87. It's a fair bet that lottery players in Western PA somehow work the '8' and '7' into their betting strategy.

All of that is great for Crosby, and great for Pittsburgh hockey fans. And, sure, it's good for the NHL, because every sport craves and counts on players catching the fandom's imagination. It's a heroes business, and right now, the slick-dishing Crosby is a hockey hero.

Even better, like the two biggest hockey heroes of recent vintage, the aforementioned Gretzky and Lemieux, he has a humility and dignity about him that fill out a very nice story. Hard, if not impossible, to imagine Sid the Kid caught with a vile of HGH or beating defenseless animal silly in some vile, inhumane dog-fighting scheme.

Yes, thankfully, Crosby is a feel-good story in an era when it has become almost impossible to feel good about opening the sports page, going to the Internet, or turning on the televison to get update on the old town team. Too often one must first attach a clothespin to the nose. Once a fete, or games too often are fetid.

For all his good, however, Crosby will not launch the NHL into a new era, cause millions upon millions of Americans to race to their televisions every time (maybe twice?) the Penguins are on national television and create a ratings number that will inch hockey up that sports totem pole. Just won't happen.

What the NHL is, for reasons good and bad, is a niche or boutique sport when compared to the twin behemoths baseball and football. Contrary to public perception, the NHL's annual gross revenues are not dwarfed the NBA's NGR. The NBA gets far better exposure in the U.S. because it gets much more over-the-air TV broadcast time, but it is not anything close to the almost government-like businesses that are Major League Baseball and the National Football League.

We, especially in the U.S. media, spend so much time and effort searching for what will make the NHL big time that we too often forget, or take for granted, what is good about the sport. Like a whole lot of Canadians, we like it, accept it for what it is and what it is not, and proudly waltz to the water cooler of our choice for heated discussion and memory-building.

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Crosby is good. He is beyond good, and by the time he is finished, the bet here is that he'll end up among the game's top 10-15 scorers and carry those numbers directly through the front door of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

How about we just focus on that, head over to Steve Nash's house, pull a beer from the fridge, and enjoy the show?

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