When teams win titles, the biggest feelings — the best feelings — belong only to the people who accomplished it.
It’s not about the people who cheer for them — not first or foremost, at least. And it’s certainly not about the people who get paid to write about and talk about sports. It’s impossible, no matter how hard we may want it, to tap into whatever championship athletes are blessed enough to tap into whenever their moment comes.
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We’re left with something less, and necessarily more removed. It’s the way of the world for us all. For some, it’s the business we’ve chosen. No complaints.
Feelings are still feelings, though, and when the Pittsburgh Penguins won their second Stanley Cup in seven years (to the day) on Sunday night, one in particular was tough to escape: relief.
And specifically, it was impossible not to watch Sidney Crosby and Phil Kessel celebrate — Phil’s face! Just look at it! — without feeling real (if secondhand) satisfaction for the two most dissected individuals in hockey.
When the word “deserved” starts creeping into your consciousness, at least as it relates to sports, you’re starting down a tough path. Intellectually, we know to elevate process, but it’s still a results-driven business. It can’t be anything other; you get what you get. Maybe you deserved more, but the outcome is what ultimately matters.
Knowing all that, though, those guys deserved what they got.
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Phil Kessel beat testicular cancer. That’s a fact that’s been muted by time, and apocryphal hot dog-related anecdotes, and a miserable exit from a city that struggled to appreciate him, a franchise that wasted his abilities and a situation that he couldn’t fix himself.
That last part isn’t Kessel’s fault; it makes him, on a lot of levels, a relatable human being. He keeps his joy for himself and his teammates, and he doesn’t like talking to reporters. Lots of people don’t.
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It doesn’t make him anything less than the person he is; it just makes him a little tougher to understand. The trick is not to pay any real mind to what he says in into microphones. Judge him by what he does on the ice — like leading a Cup team in points, or being the best forward on an Olympic team, or producing on every big stage anybody has ever placed him on.
Judge him for the way he acts when cameras aren’t around. It’s tough to find someone who actually knows Kessel and doesn’t like him. That matters.
“It’s tough for me to explain because you guys don’t know him,” Penguins goalie Jeff Zatkoff told Sports Illustrated’s Alex Prewitt. “He’s loose. But he’s reserved with (the media). We’re privileged to see that.”
“I think you sometimes have to be careful with who you let into your life … I think that’s true for pretty much most guys, but he tends to be maybe a little harder to crack. At the same time, once you get to know him, he’s a great guy.”
Getting to know Kessel like Zatkoff and the rest of the Penguins know him isn’t possible. It is possible, though, to recognize when a good guy who’s gotten a raw deal at plenty of turns makes something great for himself.
"It's been a journey,” Kessel said on the ice in San Jose. He had tears in his eyes. Good luck rooting against that.
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Sidney Crosby lost nearly two full seasons of his prime. That’s a fact that’s become muted by time, and unfair expectations, and a franchise that struggled from 2009 until six months ago to surround him with players good enough to help him fully deliver.
One Cup was never going to be enough. When you’re the avatar of the sport for nearly half of your life, more is expected. It’s not fair, but for Crosby, it’s reality.
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Like Kessel, Crosby tends to not say much for public consumption. You’ll hear cliches in bulk, because it’s how he has to operate. At times, though, he’ll show his hand, and you’ll know how much this all matters to him. More often than not, he’ll do it through facial expressions.
More often than that, he’ll do it through work. In the Eastern Conference final against Tampa, he was scoring game-winning goals. Against San Jose, points were tougher to come by, but the process was there — along with, yes, the sense that he was steering the emotional ship.
Crosby does a lot. He’s good at nearly everything. That didn’t just happen.
“There’s always good players who come in, guys that do it for a few years, but there’s not many people at his level who do it for all those years,” longtime linemate Chris Kunitz said after the game.
“Early in his career he went out and got points and did everything but that didn't make him satisfied. He had to go out and lead through example and became a better player. Offense, defense, he goes out with nine seconds left, takes a face off for our team.
“He's the all-encompassing guy, one of the greatest players to ever play the game because of how he can adapt to the game and how hard he works at everything."
And he’s fought his way through a lot — that concussion, those expectations, and the omnipresent, laser-like refusal by too many fans to focus on anything other than goals — to win another Cup that shouldn’t have been needed to cement his greatness, but does anyway.
“He was going to will this thing,” coach Mike Sullivan said.
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As soon as goalie Matt Murray finished a pedestrian Game 5, it was obvious that the Conn Smythe was going to be either Kessel’s or Crosby’s.
The former outpaced the latter in overall points (22-19), goals (10-6) and 5-on-5 points (11-8). The latter outpaced the former in terms of puck possession, though that didn’t translate into goals.
The argument for Kessel is easier to make; the argument for Crosby probably leans too heavily on the intangible — like Ryan Lambert wrote at Yahoo, it’s unlikely that the 18 Conn voters, en masse, started making their decisions based on underlying numbers.
In the end, it went to Crosby. With hindsight, he may have won it during the Lightning series, or when he set up the Penguins’ game-winning goal in their first game against the Sharks. He's the second player in history, to Joe Sakic, to win a Cup, a Conn Smythe, a Hart Trophy and gold medals at the Olympics, World Championships and World Juniors.
Should he have completed the circuit? Should Kessel have knocked out two legs of it in one swoop? If it matters, it's only barely. Both already knew that sports isn't always fair. And while the rest of us are free to argue, those two have a full summer, and then the rest of their lives, to enjoy the bigger trophy. They deserve it.