Have we seen the best of Sidney Crosby?

[Shrimper]

Not trying to bring the debate up again but I just looked at his stats on NHL.com and saw his streaks.

He has two point streaks of 10 games and 8 (18 and 17 points in those).

Means that in 18 games he has 35 points. Just under 2.00PPG.

When he is on, he is on.

Currently he is on a streak of 3 games with 5 points.

 

[Phil68]

quite frankly I don't think we have seen Sidney or Gino's full potential.

 

[Jacob]

The only major difference I see between 09 Crosby and today's Crosby is less goals via deflection. I think that's what's keeping him at a modest 40 goal pace this year (and last), rather than, say, a 50-55 goal pace.

 

[Duffy13]

I thought I saw some bad body language from him a couple of weeks ago. He seemed pissed off at HCDB... ie. waving off a timeout, jumping on the ice saying "I don't F,n care" when he DB wanted to get him away from Phaneuf... and it looked like it affected his play a little. He looked "down" for the lack of a better term.

I doubt he stays that way for long... injuries starting to heal and players coming back, Shero being an active GM at the deadline, the Olympics... are a couple factors that should motivate Crosby to overcome any negativity

 

[66-30-33]

I thought I saw some bad body language from him a couple of weeks ago. He seemed pissed off at HCDB... ie. waving off a timeout, jumping on the ice saying "I don't F,n care" when he DB wanted to get him away from Phaneuf... and it looked like it affected his play a little. He looked "down" for the lack of a better term.

I doubt he stays that way for long... injuries starting to heal and players coming back, Shero being an active GM at the deadline, the Olympics... are a couple factors that should motivate Crosby to overcome any negativity

Uh...he's ultra competitive?

 

[Duffy13]

Uh...he's ultra competitive?

Of course he is, that still doesn't mean he can't go into a short lull when the team is decimated by injuries, when the Coach is not very good at manufacturing better matchups etc etc... It looked like for a short period of time he was just sick of it, and it seemed to affect his play. He will still produce points, he'll still play hard, he'll still try harder than anyone to win, but even with Sidney Crosby you could see that a small edge was missing from his game.

Purely speculation as to why of course, he could have had an illness, another compressed schedule due to the Olympics, maybe this was the time he takes a short "playing break" to stay charged for an entire season as it's got to be extremely tough on the body and mind to play like he does for so long,or maybe he's just looking ahead to Christmas lol. I don't think it lasts long, because he is such a competitive person with immense self motivation and with external factors to help that motivation as well.

I voted YES, as I don't think he can play at a much higher level than the last couple of years, but I don't think a decline is anywhere close to imminent.

 

[Fire Shero*]

He should be ecstatic now that the Dopee nightmare is over, at least for this season.

 

[Duffy13]

He should be ecstatic now that the Dopee nightmare is over, at least for this season.

and that Shero was somewhat thankful that injury happened with a lot of time before the trade deadline. Thankful of the timing, not the injury of course. It sounds like he may try to fix Sid's wing through trade a little sooner, which is promising.

 

[Fogel]

He may not be scoring as much previously, but he also is taking on the harder assignments that Staal used to and still leading the league in scoring.

 

[Le Magnifique 66]

I still don't think we've seen the best of him just yet, I still think he has another gear and will elevate from the Olympics on until June!

 

[Offtheboard412]

I'd wager he'd be pretty darn close to his 10/11 pace if he could manage to actually finish on some of his breakaways this year. I've counted 5 so far that he hasn't converted.

 

[#66]

No... We haven't seen him with skill or playing in a skilled system yet. IMO that's when the game will become easier for him and he can focus on skilled plays instead of grinding ones. Its to his credit that he can do both.

Also I don't think he's that good defensively yet. He's great at going out and chasing but IMO its a little to much about chasing.