ST. LOUIS -- As milestones go, Sidney Crosby will have many more momentous than the 400th goal he finally, finally, scored Sunday in the Penguins' 4-1 flattening of the Blues at Scottrade Center.
But he won't have many that are more characteristic.
Not in the sense that this team-first captain whom Mike Babcock once famously labeled "a serial winner" came through in the clutch, tying the score in the second period 21 seconds after St. Louis had struck first.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEOCertainly not in the sense that, well ...
"It's a typical Crosby goal," as Mike Sullivan would observe later with the smile of a proud papa. "He scores more goals from below the goal line than I've ever seen. He's one of the few guys who thinks the game at such a high level, to make the types of plays he makes from down there. That's what I thought when it went in. It doesn't surprise me. Some people might think it's a fluke. It's not a fluke. Because I've seen it so many times."
This one's worth a couple more ...
Don't call Crosby a grinder, even if his ultimate claim in hockey history could be that he'll have been the game's greatest grinder. He doesn't like the term at all.
But hey, take a look up there. What begins the sequence is hard pressure by Crosby on the Blues' Brayden Schenn. When Schenn feels he's in trouble, he shoves the puck one-handed behind the net in hopes of reaching teammate Jay Bouwmeester. And he might have if Conor Sheary hadn't smartly parked in that lane, intercepted the puck, then fed out to Crosby, who alertly bolted out of the corner upon seeing this.
"Great play by Shear-sy," the captain would tell me.
It really was. And those two make more plays than most seem to realize. There's a genuine chemistry there.
The rest, as Sullivan suggested, was quintessential Sid ...
Alex Pietrangelo swoops back to try to help the beaten Schenn. Too late. Both of them.
And Crosby, bending that knee dramatically as he so often does for some odd shooting angle or other, spies a spot between Jake Allen's right skate and the pipe -- not enough for a baby mouse to call home -- and somehow slips it through.
"That's why he's the best player in the world," Allen said of Crosby. "I wouldn't play that one any differently. He's one hell of a smart player. It's a pretty good shot."
It's not an accident. It's seldom an accident, as Sullivan stressed and his counterpart, the Blues' Mike Yeo, a former assistant with the Penguins, echoed.
"I can tell you that's a play I've seen that player make an awful lot," Yeo said. "He's always got his head up below the goal line, always looking for spots."
Which spot, exactly?
"You're trying to put it in that area, short-side," Crosby replied. "Sometimes there's room there."
A little reminiscent, at least stylistically, of his iconic Olympic goal against Ryan Miller in Vancouver?
"Eh," he came back to my question. "I'm not sure. I could see that."
Right. Because that one was five-hole. And it's not like he was aiming for Allen's five-hole here. Again, it's not an accident.
Crosby would flick No. 401 into an empty net with 2:48 remaining, somewhat fulfilling Sullivan's early-morning prediction that the 400th would "open the floodgates." And to be sure, it brought relief, if only because he hadn't scored over a season-high 10 games, nearly a month going back to Jan. 11.
Sullivan conceded, "I know he's been pressing for this one for a while," and that couldn't have been more evident than Friday in Dallas, when he registered six shots and was robbed of an overtime breakaway by a narrow offside call. At one point that night, after the Stars scored while he was on the ice, he slammed his stick angrily against the glass.
"Yeah, it's been a long 10 games," he'd say after this. "Nice to see one go in."
The script should sound familiar. A year ago, Crosby needed four increasingly frustrating games to reach the much more significant milestone of 1,000 points. And when he did, against the Jets at PPG Paints Arena, he'd go on to burn Winnipeg's Connor Hellebuyck in overtime:
"That," Kris Letang spoke that night, "is what great players do."
The adjectives long ago lost any authority in describing Crosby's greatness. Even the cold numbers, though they ascend stratospherically, can be so casually taken for granted:
If he got 400, and he's 30 years old, then it stands to reason he'll get 500 or 600 or more, right?
Well, on the ice, it didn't appear to be that big of a deal. Crosby himself had to peek around Allen to see that the puck entered and, once he did, his arms went up as they would for any other goal. He was greeted with the standard fist-bumps at the bench, nothing more than the extra pat on the shoulder from Sullivan. Linesman Mark Shewchyk skated over to toss the puck to Dana Heinze, the equipment manager, and that was that.
Off the ice, though, it was different. Sullivan invited all of the players' fathers -- who accompanied the team to Dallas and here as part of the annual dads trip -- into the locker room. And it was there that the players chose Troy Crosby, Sid's dad, to don the customary Steelers helmet that's awarded after victories. The room could be heard to erupt with cheers, and you should have seen Mr. Crosby beaming out in the hallway afterward.
"Having my dad here, who sacrificed so much for me to play hockey, all the early mornings, was nice," the younger Crosby said, possibly also referring to the day's faceoff at 11:08 a.m. Central. "To have all the dads along on this trip, to get three out of four points, hopefully we can get them back next year, too."
Sullivan, too, went out of his way to make sure the moment wasn't missed.
"We're thrilled for Sid," he said. "It's such a great accomplishment to score 400 goals in this league. And in Sid's case, to score 400 goals as quickly as he has is another level of accomplishment."
No question:
• Crosby's the 95th player in NHL history to score 400.
• He's the third to do it with the Penguins, joining Mario Lemieux (690) and Jaromir Jagr (439).
• He's the fifth in the NHL who entered the league in this century -- Gary Bettman's Dead Puck era, if you will -- to score 400, joining Alexander Ovechkin (590), Rick Nash (433), Ilya Kovalchuk (417) and Marian Gaborik (403).
• Staying in that context of this century, Crosby's the third-fastest to score 400 at 839 games, behind Ovechkin (634) and Kovalchuk (771). But those guys are pure gunners, while Crosby's got 688 assists.
• As such, Crosby's the 25th player in NHL history with at least 400 goals and at least 600 assists.
Have I mentioned he's only 30?
