The Kid: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL.

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Shawna Richer was given an enviable assignment in 2005. The Globe & Mail reporter was told to shadow hockey phenom Sidney Crosby, from his drafting first overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins, to the end of his rookie year. Richer had the cooperation not only of the 18-year old star, but also of his family and of the team’s players and brass. The result is a book full of adulation, with nary a hint of criticism. How many ways are there to express talent? How often does the reader need to be convinced of Crosby’s skills? Richer finds enough superlatives to make her book a veritable thesaurus. Perhaps the most interesting is a description of Crosby usually reserved for a racehorse: “Crosby’s strong, sturdy haunches,” she says, “made for a smooth and powerful pace. All his hard work looked easier because he had learned to move his body efficiently. His first few steps were explosive and then the economy of motion drove him.” Richer interviewed dozens of people who had anything to do with Crosby during that first year and came away with enough plaudits and accolades to turn her subject into a superman. His youth coupled with his skills bring out the hyperboles. The Penguins’ 2005–2006 season was a statistical disaster, as they went 22-46-14. But never mind, because Crosby, with his 39 goals and 63 assists, became the youngest player in NHL history to reach 100 points. To drive home this fact, Richer adds an appendix providing highlights of Crosby’s performance in each and every Penguin game of that year. Unwilling to end her book on the downer of an unsuccessful season, she has updated it with a concluding chapter on the 2006–2007 season in which the team made the playoffs and Crosby “cleaned up at the NHL awards ceremony.”

There is no disputing the fact that Sidney Crosby is a great hockey player. Whether he deserves to be lauded so lavishly so soon is something true hockey fans must decide, and it is to them that the book will appeal.