Athlete of the Year
Sidney Crosby
By Bob Grove

Here at PSR, the criteria for selecting our Sportsman of the Year aren't complicated. We set out in pursuit of the area's best athlete based on his or her performance during the calendar year - nothing more, nothing less.

Once again this year, it benefited Sidney Crosby that we have no minimum age requirements. By the time he ceased being a teenager four months ago, the Penguins' celebrated center had already cemented his second straight honor.

Pasted onto the resumes of most of the players in the National Hockey League, Crosby's achievements over the past 12 months would serve very nicely as career highlights.

He became the youngest scoring champion in the history of team sports (that's any sport, folks) by claiming the Art Ross Trophy with 120 points as he pushed the Penguins back into the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2001.

He reached 200 career points quicker than any player in NHL history, racing by some guy named Wayne Gretzky. Crosby won the Hart Trophy as the league's Most Valuable Player and also became the youngest player ever awarded the Lester B. Pearson Award as the MVP as voted on by his peers.

He became the youngest player in NHL history to start in the All-Star Game since fan balloting began in 1986, and he became the youngest captain in NHL history when the Penguins sewed the "C" on his sweater last May.

Not a bad year, eh?

"You play to win, ultimately, but it's nice to be rewarded," Crosby said in looking back over an amazing 2007 that put the native of Cole Harbour, N.S. in his own historic neighborhood and squarely in the crosshairs of every other NHL team.

And that's perhaps one of the most significant aspects of Crosby's play over the past year. He won the scoring title in the season after he broke Mario Lemieux's team record for points by a rookie and became the focal point of every opponent's game plan. It's a challenge to which he's grown accustomed, both physically and mentally.

"It's like that with every team. You're playing against top defensemen, and basically their goal is to stop your line," he says. "That's a huge challenge for anyone, for anybody I play with and myself included. You have to be ready each and every night to battle through that.

"It's almost like a heavyweight fighter sometimes: you have to be ready every night, make sure you're ready to bring your best, because other teams are going to bring theirs."

Crosby also became the third player in NHL history to record 100 points in each of his first two seasons, and his two-season total of 222 points was the fifth-best two-season total in league history.

And he's showed no signs of slowing down this season. After 23 games, Crosby was tied for second in the NHL scoring race behind Tampa Bay's Vincent Lecavalier and had already put together a career-high 19-game scoring streak. Oh, and he also established himself as one of the NHL's best faceoff men as he ranked third (54.8 percent) among all players who had taken at least 400 faceoffs.

Just rounding out the old game, you know.

Or prepping for another run at PSR's Sportsman of the Year next year.