Great expectations

Late last Friday afternoon, when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman flipped open the sealed envelope, the epicenter of the league's turnaround (officially branded: ''A Whole New Game") became Pittsburgh. The Penguins won the league's first 30-team draft lottery, and the right to select Sidney Crosby first overall in tomorrow's amateur entry draft in Ottawa.

Take one 17-year-old phenom, dress him up in faded black and gold, and then stand back and wait for a league to rise from the ashes.

Not expecting too much, is it?

''I think he can be very important," said Crosby's agent, Pat Brisson, eschewing the widely held expectation his client will be the league's savior. ''He can bring excitement to the game, which we need a lot . . . so he's definitely a component. But save the game? I wouldn't want to say that."

There could have been better cities, better hockey towns, with accompanying bigger and better existing media infrastructure for the NHL to begin focusing its long climb back from Bankruptville. But Pittsburgh it is, and Crosby, even before he takes his first NHL shift, looks like the best thing to come skating down the pike since another precocious Penguin, Mario Lemieux, debuted with 100 points in 1984-85. That might be underselling the talents of Peter Forsberg and even another dazzling Penguin, Jaromir Jagr, but as sensational as they were, they didn't arrive with two hefty endorsement contracts (Reebok and Gatorade) already in the bank, and their arrival didn't coincide with the league attempting to resurrect itself.

Crosby, from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, is first and foremost a slick-passing center. A touch under 6 feet, he also is rock solid -- to the point of untippable -- on his skates. He is not one to shy away from hits, be he the giver or receiver. In that sense, his game might best resemble Forsberg's, and his knack for maintaining control of the puck through the neutral zone recently had Scotty Bowman, the Hall of Fame coach, drawing comparisons to both Rocket Richard and Glenn Anderson.

Reebok got aboard the Crosby bandwagon, in part, because of such unique comparsions. It was just over a year ago that the Canton-based powerhouse acquired The Hockey Company (including CCM, Jofa, and Koho), and began attaching the Rbk brand to uniforms, sticks, skates, and protective equipment. According to John Frascotti, Reebok's senior vice president of new business (and a hockey dad), Crosby could be to hockey what Tiger Woods has been to golf, Michael Jordan to basketball, and in some ways what Bobby Orr once was to the Original Six NHL.

''In sports marketing, you look for guys who come along once in a generation who are exceptional," mused the 45-year-old Frascotti. ''This young guy has excelled at every level. He's also personable, good looking . . . in many ways truly unique. And for us, it's a nice coincidence of timing -- we're looking to relaunch The Hockey Company, and the NHL is moving into a new generation of open ice, more scoring . . . "

Added Bernadette Mansur, the NHL group vice president of communications, ''It's truly a fortuitous time to have Mr. Crosby join us. People are excited."

Star-crossed
The history of the last 20 years, though, has shown there must be some caution built into the equation. Lemieux came along in the midst of the Great Gretzky era, with the game's offense still freewheeling, and then came a succession of highly touted phenoms who, for various reasons, did not rival their records or impinge on their profiles. Jagr in Pittsburgh and Forsberg in Colorado were the best of the bunch.

Eric Lindros, dubbed the ''Next One," was the brawniest of the lot, but he didn't blossom into a full-blown superstar or record-breaker. As strong and talented as he was, his game wore down quickly, a byproduct of injuries (in particular, concussions) and a quirky ego. Rick Curran, his original agent, mused that it's a much different world today than when Lindros entered the league in 1992.

''In many ways, what's happening is reminiscent of the excitement Eric generated," said Curran, reached by phone at his office outside Philadelphia. ''I was cleaning out the attic the other day, and there was an old copy of The Hockey News, with the lead headline something like ''The 50 Things You Never Knew About Eric Lindros." I chuckled to myself a little, thinking it was hard to believe we did all that. You knew about guys, but other than The Hockey News, everything about the business, and who was on the way, was sort of word of mouth, really."

Adding to the hype, in Crosby's case, was Wayne Gretzky tabbing Crosby the most likely to challenge his records. It was the official stamp. The Great One essentially labeled Crosby the Next One. The rage was on.

''It's just instantaneous today," said Curran. ''We didn't have cellphones then, faxes, e-mail . . . by comparison, everything now is just so fast. I don't know Sidney Crosby, but what I know of him, he sounds like he is a terrific kid. If I had it to do over, my advice would be for the people around him to do their best to allow him to be a kid, allow him his innocence. I'm not really sure you can do that in this day and age -- but having Mario with him in Pittsburgh will certainly help. And a guy like [Mark] Recchi, who played with Eric in Philadelphia, he'd have an eye, if he spotted something, he'd be able to say, 'Hey, Sid, don't go there.' "

Forsberg, obtained by Quebec/Colorado in the swap that sent Lindros to Philadelphia to begin his career, has had the far better career, including two Cups won with the Avalanche.

Alexandre Daigle, the No. 1 pick in '93, virtually drowned in the wave of expectations that surrounded him when he joined expansion Ottawa that fall. Less than seven underperforming years later, he quit hockey, until recent renaissance attempts with Pittsburgh and Minnesota.

Joe Thornton, picked first overall by the Bruins in '97, has shown flashes of brilliance. But at age 26, Jumbo Joe has yet to fulfill the hype that he would be a Lindros-Mike Modano hybrid, dominating the game with his power, skill, and skating strength.

All in all, a variety of men, some big, some average in size and strength, have had mixed success in fulfilling the ''Next One's" role.

The 'Next One'
To Crosby now goes the torch.

''If he's half of everything we hear about him, I'll be ecstatic," said Bruins executive vice president Charlie Jacobs. ''I hope so. I think the NHL as a league needs a personality like that. But I think it might be a bit unfair to tag a kid as the next savior. If he's half of all of what everyone is saying, he'll be a tremendous player. Personally, I'd hate to say Sid is going to save our game. Let's say we do all that, and then he comes in and struggles. Then what does that say about us? Joe [Thornton] wasn't a great player his first couple of years. He was good, but he wasn't going to redefine hockey."

The best the Bruins have seen in the wake of Orr departing has been Ray Bourque, who came with all the profile and ballyhoo attached to his lot as the No. 8 pick in the '79 draft (defenseman Rob Ramage was taken No. 1 by Colorado). Bourque, inducted in the Hall of Fame last November, became the top scoring defenseman in NHL history (1,579 points).

Steve Freyer, Bourque's agent for most of his 20-plus years with the Bruins, bluntly stated earlier this week the hype around Crosby ''scares the death out of me."

''Even on the NHL website, you read things like he could be the next Great One," added Freyer. ''Hey, obviously, there is a ton of potential with this kid. But I also know that a lot of saviors the last 20 years haven't been the savior. C'mon, let the kid get some games under his belt. Among the things all the hype does, it puts this huge target on him on the ice, and the opposition pays all that much more attention to him."

By all accounts, Crosby can deflect the hits, hold on to the puck, and then either pop it in the net or dish a laser of a pass for someone else to ram home. His game was so good so early in life that he did his first TV interview in Canada at age 7 (think: Tiger Woods on ''The Mike Douglas Show"). The son of a former NHL draft pick (Troy Crosby, 12th round, Canadiens in '84), he took on Brisson as a family adviser at age 13, in part to end the incessant march of agents to the family door. It also helped Brisson, head of IMG's hockey department, that he knew Troy Crosby from their days playing against each other in junior hockey.

''Sidney's very mature for his age, and that's always helped him," said Brisson, whose star client arrives on the scene when the NHL has pared starting salary to a maximum $850,000 a year (the Entry Level System still offers the opportunity to add millions more in bonus money). ''At whatever age, it's always like he's 5 or 10 years ahead in maturity. His best quality is that he sees ahead -- to where he wants to be."

As an example, noted Brisson, Crosby was only 15 when he asked to join Team Canada's top junior squad. What Canadian lad wouldn't want to wear the country's Maple Leaf, right? But Crosby didn't request a roster spot. Instead, he signed on as a team trainer.

''He picked up bottles, towels, and tape," said Brisson. ''He wanted to be around the guys, and most of all, he wanted to see the drills, how they practiced, and know what he would have to do to prepare."

Instant message
There may be no preparing for what awaits in Pittsburgh. A moribund franchise in recent years, frequently in the throes of financial disaster for much of the '90s and this decade, too, the club awakened with a start when Bettman revealed the lottery winner on the third floor of a midtown Manhattan hotel. The Mighty Ducks finished runner-up. Instantaneously, according to Tom McMillan (Penguins VP of communications and marketing), the switchboard in the ticket sales department was inundated, the lines burning with buy orders reminiscent of when the Penguins won back-to-back Cups in the early '90s.

''They took orders until midnight, and then the staff went across the street, checked into a hotel, and came back the next morning at 7 to start taking orders again," said McMillan. ''It has been wild. We've been down the last few years, and we've had to trade away some of our top players [Jagr, Alexei Kovalev, and Martin Straka among the many]. This is a market where people understood the game's economic concerns. There was this feeling among the fans, during the lockout, 'Hey, we have to get this fixed.'

''Then, boom, like that, the CBA gets done and we get the first pick. Suddenly, we're on the cool morning talk shows, and there's all this Sidney Crosby talk, and heck, we haven't even drafted him yet. This time of year, the stations are doing the countdown to Steelers camp -- and they do that for a month. Now it's all hockey, in full furor and frenzy."

Hockey is back in Pittsburgh. In 29 other cities and towns, the countdown to a new season, and perhaps a new era, ticks toward Opening Night Oct. 5. We'll begin to find out then if the baby-faced kid, with a killer's touch, can rejuvenate a league desperately in need of taking away its most consistent shot -- the one to its own feet.

''I'm not worried about that right now," Crosby said moments after the lottery played out, responding to a question regarding the host of expectations around him. ''I just have to focus on being my best."

To that end, the league and the wunderkind who may save it, start their way down a path of identical interests tomorrow.