Dunlap: Credit Crosby's Season, Don't Discredit It
Stop the insanity.
Cease the foolishness.
Discontinue with this whole "sky is falling" narrative as it pertains to Penguins center Sidney Crosby.
He's been really good this season.
At least by this measure, he's been really good: Going into play on Wednesday night, as the calendar has now flipped from March to April, Crosby leads the National Hockey League with 79 points in a season where scoring is down all over.
Crosby held a two-point advantage over Washington's Alexander Ovechkin and the Islanders' John Tavares as the Penguins prepared to host Philadelphia on Wednesday night.
Crosby's 25 goals were the fewest of the three men at the top as Ovechkin had scored a whopping 50 and Tavares 34, but Sid was outpacing the other two by a decent margin in assists with 54. Tavares had 43; Ovechkin just 27.
But you know what the sentiment seems to be with Crosby this season in this town? You know what the feeling from the fanbase and the declaration from the denizens of Twitter has been?
That he hasn't done enough.
Or that he's had a down year.
Or that, forget that he's on top of the scoring race, he shouldn't be compared to his equals, rather always measured against that 120 point season he had when he was 19 or the one when he was 22 that he tallied 109 points.
Or, people seem to even be at odds with the fact that Crosby will come nowhere near matching the 104 points he measured last season.
For the life of me, I'll never be able to comprehend why being the best --- or among the best --- in a particular and defined space of time isn't good enough.
Say it with me (slowly if you need to) as the facts bear it out: Sidney Crosby is leading the league in scoring right now.
Shouldn't that be good enough?
I don't understand why the superhuman has come to be expected from a guy who, in his performance this season, has proven to be among the best humans.
Undeniably there is vast room for improvement for Crosby when the season vaults into the postseason and the games increase in consequence. Let's be frank here, scoring eight goals in the past 27 playoff games --- which Crosby has done --- is grossly underwhelming for a player of his caliber.
Maybe just maybe, that's the root of some of the failure to credit Crosby for what he's done in this regular season as the Penguins are almost-certainly headed back to the playoffs again. Perhaps it gets into people holding a grudge and waiting to give him credit until he does it in crunch time; until he performs again at an elite level in the postseason.
In some ways, that's fair.
What isn't is to downplay what Crosby has done to this point in the 2014-15 regular season.
Has he been brilliant every night? Nope.
Has --- by a point measure --- been the best in the game? Absolutely.
Too often in this town --- and probably in any good sports town, although this is the best one in America --- folks don't take enough time to stop and smell the roses, but rather complain about what isn't happening.
We have a dynamic man who used to have long-flowing locks patrolling centerfield for our baseball team.
We have one of the most dominant quarterbacks and, perhaps, the preeminent multi-faceted running back of his time running the ball and catching it out of the backfield suiting up for our football team.
We also have Sidney Crosby, a dynamic star who is without a doubt one of the chief individual talents of this generation or any other.
Is Crosby the best of all-time? Who knows?
Is Crosby even the best to wear a Penguins sweater? Again, who knows?
What's known is this: Looking at the numbers when measured against the peers he plays with and against, he has proven time and again to be at the very top or, at worst, among the conversation as the best.
Nothing about that should change because of his output this season.
To reiterate, as March turned to April, Crosby was the leading scorer in the National Hockey League.
I don't know where or how anyone can extract a negative from such an achievement; but I sure can't.
So please, just stop the insanity.
Colin Dunlap is a featured columnist at CBSPittsburgh.com. He can also be heard weekdays from 5:40 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sports Radio 93-7 "The Fan." You can e-mail him at colin.dunlap@cbsradio.com. Check out his bio here.
