amazing how easily Crosby falls down if he’s got such amazing legs. Later down the list, the writer cites Georges Laraque talking about how hard is it to move Crosby because he’s so strong....sure doesn’t look like it when he’s playing, though....

Posted by ghost from Wisconsin on 06/02/08 at 04:11 PM ET

I tried to post this before Game 5 but our internet connection at work crashed:

No. 1: One of his nicknames in the dressing room is “Creature,” a nod to his freakish lower body. It is huge. Gigantic. Hugantic. His caboose would make J-Lo jealous. His thighs are bigger than my torso. All his pants have to be custom made. And the scary part is, his upper body is starting to catch up.

Is it just me, or does it sound like Duthie is calling him a big weenie?

Sid’s other nicknames in the room are now entirely related to his facial hair struggles. They include “Three-Beard,” “Zorro” and “Greasy Mexican” (political correctness is not a forte of NHL dressing rooms).

Let’s see...Creature, check...Three-Beard, check...Zorro, check...Greasy Mexican, check...hold on a second, they seem to missing one...oh yeah, Butthead, check.

No. 3: Sid is superstitious. OK, this one you may have heard. But the extent of his superstition is as extreme as his skill. For instance, when he walks through the Mellon Arena, he has a specific route that defies logic.

“He will walk 20 yards out of the way to go around a certain pole or go through a specific door. And it never, ever varies,” says one Penguins staffer, who showed me the route. It was baffling.

He also won’t wear proper shoes in the dressing room. If he’s showered and fully dressed, and has to go back into the room, he’ll take his dress shoes off at the door, as if it were some traditional Japanese restaurant.

When he eats, Maxime Talbot must sit on his left, Pascal Dupuis on his right.

At a recent team breakfast in Detroit, a Penguins staffer sat down to eat, and was met with shocked stares from the players sitting around him.

“That’s Sid’s seat!” they said.

“He wouldn’t have gotten mad or anything, he’s too nice for that,” says the seat-stealer. “But if I would have stayed there, he just would have hovered around quietly until I left.”

Wow, sounds like he’s actually Sid the OCD Kid. This sheds new light on his chat with Zetterberg after Game 4…

BH: Excuse me, sir, but you seem to be obstructing my chances at winning the Stanley Cup and being fully annointed as the greatest hockey player in the world. Being so “nice,” I will continue to hover around quietly until you’re finished eating my dinner.

No. 6: Sid understands the media better than Marshall McLuhan.

“It’s crazy how smart and savvy he is,” says Penguins defenceman Hal Gill. “Sometimes he’ll say to us, ‘The media is trying to write a certain story, so when they ask you this question, answer it this way.’”

Hey, wait a second! Maybe he’s doing that to me right now. Evil genius, that Crosby.

Hmmmm...I guess that explains those strings on the back of “HCMT.”

No. 8: Sid loves to kill bad guys. Sorry, I should clarify. I mean in video games. Last season, eight of the Penguins got PSPs so they could play a shoot-em-up army game called SOCOM against each other. The guys were only supposed to play on planes, but it soon became clear that Sid was practising at home.

“Of course he had to beat all of us, says Laraque. “He’s so competitive.”

They’ve now moved on to Call of Duty on XBox.

“He plays like a girl,” says Talbot. “He’s always hiding in the corner. Anything to win.”

Kind of like on a Peguins PP, huh?

Posted by YzermanZetterberg on 06/03/08 at 07:59 AM ET