#that last bit is something that didnāt get folded into heated rivalry at all #like neither shane nor ilya feel any sense of responsibility to the league itself or like #for saving the sport or whatever #if you are curious about what shaneās everyday experience of fame might be like #I wonder if connor mcdavid is a closer parallel #just in terms of what itās like to be a canadian superstar drafted by a canadian team and expected to save the franchise #and dealing with like. idk. being in an intense hockey market
good tags jes, I felt they had to be included...
this question is hard in the sense that the cumulative build of sidney crosby and all that's happened over his career is what makes him sidney crosby; what if he hadn't scored the golden goal? what if he hadn't won the cup three times? what if he hadn't won until he was nearly 30? hypotheticals spin impossibilities, so there's no good true answerāwe'll just never know. he is who he is because that's who he is etc. etc., he isn't a composite of parts but one whole story and that story isn't one where he didn't score the goal, so on so forth
that being said, I agree with jes parsing "canadian legacy" from hockey legacy; the golden goal means ten billion times less to the american/international hockey market than what it means to canada and its national-identity-through-sports. it's what made sid akin to a god in canada, but canada is not the rest of the world, and his fame in the rest of the world is middling compared to a lot of other professional athletes.
was sid's fame in canada impacted by the golden goal? absolutely. was sid already much more famous in canada than he was in the US/rest of the world? certainly.
I think there's a component missing here: shane plays for a canadian team (a very storied one, no less, if we're saying montreal). sid plays for an american team. I cannot describe to you how much more insane canada would be about sid if he played for montreal (insane in a bad or good way? who's to say... they'd be more reverent and also more critical, I think. I blanch at the thought of sid playing for toronto).
sid would be less famous in america if he played for a canadian team, and more famous in canada (...maybe? or the fame would be more intense? hypotheticals hypotheticals...). canada already cares about hockey, more than most americans can understand, barring people from the south whose towns are run by their football programs.
in the heated rivalry universe, I do not think americans-who-don't-like-hockey care very much about shane.
when I was 14 and didn't care about hockey, I watched sidney crosby score the golden goal, completely not understanding who he was, probably disappointed that america (my country) had lost, and didn't really think about him again until a webcomic artist namedropped him half a decade later. I might have been able to recognize his name as a hockey player, but that's it. I wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a lineup, and that was him as the most famous active hockey player in the world.
tl;dr I think the question is inherently hard to answer, and I think "canadian fame" vs. "american fame" or "international fame" are different things, and I think what matters more, in a sense, is which country shane plays in when it comes to both types of fame
ah and one last aside: I didn't talk a lot about mcdavid here because frankly I don't know a lot about his narratives, but he doesn't Matter to canada in the same way sid does. why? because he hasn't won. he's great. he's impressive. he matters a hell of a lot to hockey-the-sport and to edmonton. but has he transcended like sid has into a symbol of national identity? no, because you need hardware to manage that
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