Ever since Sidney Crosby was cleared to start rehabbing after undergoing a wrist procedure on Sep. 8, he worked incredibly hard to get himself ready to join the lineup.
It started with skating on his own throughout the course of training camp before practicing with the team for the first time on Oct. 9.
From there, Crosby continued to do individual sessions with skills coach Ty Hennes in addition to taking part in practice, many times doing both in the same day, which meant he spent hours on the ice.
His teammates and coaches marveled at the hours Crosby was putting in trying to get back into form, and he was able to make his season debut in Saturday's 4-2 loss to New Jersey at PPG Paints Arena after missing the first seven games of the year.
While the night didn't go the way Crosby would've liked both from an individual and team perspective, mentally, it was huge to return to play.
"It's good," Crosby said. "It's nice to be back, and I love being back out there with the guys. But ultimately, you want to win and play well, and that didn't happen tonight. So got some improving to do here."
The captain was pretty critical of his performance, as he recorded two shots and finished a minus-3 in 19:16 of ice time. He was particularly displeased with his work in the faceoff dot, an area he had really been focusing on in the days leading up to tonight, as he needed to be comfortable battling and lifting sticks coming off this type of injury.
"I felt better in practice than I did tonight," said Crosby, who won eight and lost 15. "Just didn't win enough. I mean, that's basically what it came down to. So that's not an excuse. It's not my wrist. I just didn't get it done."
Crosby wasn't quite sure what to expect coming off a procedure like this, as it's one he hadn't experienced before. He said his conditioning felt all right, but that his timing was a little off.
"It's hard to gauge that when I haven't been in this situation before," he said. "Obviously, I would've liked it to go better."
Crosby is known as a fierce competitor, someone who oftentimes hates losing more than he likes winning. That was evident in how he evaluated his play, and head coach Mike Sullivan said Crosby's comments didn't surprise him.
"I think we all have such high expectations of him, but for him, it's not an easy thing to jump into a regular season NHL game when you've gone through what he's gone through," Sullivan said. "I thought he competed hard. Our expectation is that it's going to take him a few games to get his timing back and things of that nature. He'll get better with every game."
October 31, 2021 at 08:21AM
https://www.nhl.com/penguins/news/crosby-competed-hard-in-season-debut/c-327415802
Crosby "Competed Hard" In Season Debut - Pittsburgh - NHL.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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