MMXIII

Last December, the humble hockey star with the thick, tousled hair became the fifth 16-year-old to play for Canada at the world junior championship and was the youngest player to score a goal for Canada at the event. He finished with two goals and four assists in limited ice time as the team settled for the silver medal in the infamous, heartbreaking 4-3 loss to the United States on a fluky bounce past goaltender Marc-André Fleury.

Sidney "was devastated," Troy recalled. "They all were. Sidney's lucky. He has a chance to come back."

This year, the 5-foot-10, 193-pound player will see more ice time. He had a solid start with three points in Canada's 6-0 victory over Finland in an exhibition game in Winnipeg on Monday. Crosby's family ties run deep; Many sacrifices were made, and taunts endured, to launch Sidney on his journey to hockey stardom.

As a centre for the Rimouski Oceanic of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Sidney has an unbelievable total of 74 points in 35 games in his second season.

Sidney first strapped on skates at 3 and played his first year of Timbits hockey at 5.

For years, he has been tagged as Canada's next great hockey hope. Even the man who rewrote the National Hockey League record books, Wayne Gretzky, said Sidney has the best chance to be the game's next superstar. But how did he get so good and stay so grounded?

"We were lucky," said Trina, 39. "We taught him to be a good person and treat others like he wanted to be treated. It wasn't complicated. We asked him to treat people with kindness and respect his elders. He's sensitive to other people. He's thoughtful."

Sidney is protective of his sister. He talks to his parents every day. Trina said Troy is Sidney's best friend. They are close. Troy, a former National Hockey League draft pick, saw his parents divorce when he was 8, and his dad never came to his hockey games. Trina, whose father died when she was 11, had brothers who played hockey. Both are youngest children. Both were essentially raised by their mothers.

"Maybe there is something to that," Troy mused. "We're just very close to our kids."

And they gave up a lot. Participation in hockey didn't come without financial sacrifice. Troy, who works as a facilities manager for a large law firm, and Trina, who works at home, took extra jobs delivering flyers—Sidney delivered them, too—to raise extra money for hockey. They took hockey-only vacations. But there is no regret.

"Maybe if he didn't play hockey, he'd be on the corner hanging out, getting in trouble," Troy said.

This season, Sidney caused a stir when he asked each QMJHL club to set aside 100 tickets for underprivileged children for each game he played in. The league made only 25 tickets a game available.

For a teenager, Sidney seems remarkably well adjusted and self-aware.

Those qualities show up on the ice, too, and proof stuffs the Crosby family room, which resembles a private museum. Dozens of pucks, all neatly marked with hockey tape bearing the record and date broken, medals and jerseys, his first interview at the age of 7, a recent five-page profile in Sports Illustrated, the cover of The Hockey News, all neatly framed.

There is a photograph of Sidney and Mario Lemieux, and a couple of sticks from Gretzky. There is the silver medal from last year's world tournament in Helsinki.

"He doesn't like that one much," Troy said with a smile.

It's been only 14 years since he started playing hockey, but it hasn't always been as easy as it looks. When Sidney began skating at 3, he took to it immediately. He had natural balance and could shoot a puck, lifting it off the ice with a wrist shot when most kids were still skating on their ankles.

"He didn't just strap on skates and take off," Troy said. "But he picked it up fairly quickly. By the following year he was that much ahead of everyone his age. At 5, he was doing a lot of things naturally. Kids that age want to carry the puck from one end of the ice to the other to score. Even at 6, Sidney was a natural passer. Stuff like that is not normal."

It caused problems with some of the other kids' parents. That was a learning curve for Trina and Troy. During one provincial playoff game, when Sidney was 8, he scored five goals, and a man in the stands called him a bum with no skills and yelled at him to go home.

They remember hearing strangers knock his size or skills.

"Sometimes there was nothing said, but you still felt it," Trina said. "Something like that happened every year and it got worse. There were so many comments. People said Troy pushed him too hard. It wasn't everyone, but there were a lot.

"Sidney was just Sidney. We didn't have an explanation as to why God made him like that. He just came to us. He's competitive and he's passionate, and that's the way he is. He loved hockey."

Troy said: "People would say I had him shooting 500 pucks and doing 200 pushups. It was ridiculous. He was competitive."

The evidence marks the unfinished side of the Crosbys' basement, which houses a Whirlpool dryer badly scuffed by slap shots, the knobs long ago knocked off by errant pucks. It still works.

The taunts at the rinks moved Sidney to tears a few times. It was confusing to a kid who was talented and had just been taught to try his hardest. In the end, it was the main reason he chose to attend prep school in Minnesota. He had just turned 15. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but the family does not regret it.

"It wasn't healthy for him to play here, physically or emotionally," Troy said. "He was taking a beating on the ice. Grown men and women were yelling at him, wanting to see him harmed. They cheered dirty hits. If he'd come back the following year, he would have been killed."

"He needed an environment where he could just be Sidney," his mother said. "It didn't come easily. Sidney had just turned 15, and I'll tell you it wasn't easy to do. But that's how strongly we felt that he had to go. He needed it. And his growth was wonderful."

Sidney is no Gretzky just yet. But some of the things he has gone through are similar. When Gretzky was a kid playing in the rinks in Brantford, Ont., he was called a puck hog by other parents and routinely booed. Trina and Troy say they empathize with some of the criticism levelled at hockey parents such as Bonnie and Carl Lindros, who were accused of pushing and controlling Eric's career.

"I've never talked to Walter [Gretzky, Wayne's father] or Carl, but I'd like to some time," Troy said. "I bet we'd have a lot of things in common."

The big rule in the Crosby house was to give 100-percent effort. It applied to everything, from doing the dishes to playing hockey.

"I don't think it was pushing," Troy said. "It was about being accountable. It was Sidney's goal to be the best. It wasn't about being a puck hog. It wouldn't have been fair to ask him to play down to other players."

Trina said: "I don't want my kids to have jobs they're just happy with. I want them to be fulfilled. We want that for our daughter, too. We want them to do everything to the best of their ability. Who wants their kids to be mediocre?"

Sidney is tough on himself when he doesn't think he has performed to a high level. But hockey is as much therapy as anything else.

Troy tells a story about his son calling home recently to ask for his spare skates to be shipped to Rimouski because the Oceanic trainer had hidden his skates on a day the coach wanted players to rest. One of the coaches spotted Sidney skating on an outdoor rink. Often, he does so with neighbourhood kids, who swarm him as if he were Gretzky.

But when he's home, his mother still gets after him for leaving his wet bath towels on the bed. And she won't allow her son, who just got his beginner's permit, to drive home from Rimouski after the season because she fears it's too dangerous.