Crosby Can’t Shoot

Johnny can’t read and Sidney can’t shoot. This may sound crazy but… The number one goal scorer in the playoffs last year is atrocious at shooting the puck. When you look at the goals he scored, only one goal was from a shot more than five feet away.  You can view all 15 goals here:

Philadelphia’s coach John Stevens will even tell you that the one Crosby goal was scored by putting the puck in his feet and throwing himself into the net, but fear not, Crosby is an emperor who is aware he has no clothes on. During the regular season last year Sidney Crosby spoke to Penguin play by play announcer Paul Steigerwald and told him that in the off season he was going to work on his shooting.  That was before he won the cup.

With the playoffs going until mid June, the celebrations going well into July, his August 7th birthday celebration with the cup, having Mike Babcock and the Canada’s Olympic Team fishing for a Stills to go with Crosby and Nash for a few weeks, and with training camp right around the corner, you have to wonder if he’s found the time. The big money is on no he has not.

Training camp’s are for players to get back in shape and brush up on their skills after a long summer off. Crosby is in shape and won’t need to brush up on any the skills that allowed him to lift the cup. He needs to use the camp to learn how to take the slapshot. The two biggest theories on why his shot is abhorrent are: Lack of upper body strength and lack of curve on his stick. The flat stick blade allows for those amazing highlight reel shootout backhanders that pop the bottles off the back of the net, but you have to wonder if he did a little weight training an he tried a stick with a little more curve on it at training camp, maybe he could keep those games from going to a shootout in the first place. 

Crosby is a young 22 and admittedly is still trying to learn, he said this in Calgary at the Olympic tryout’s: “I’ll try to be a sponge here and take whatever I can back to Pittsburgh, I’m going to try to be better for it.” There is one thing keeping Crosby from being on the same level as Gretzky and Lemieux, and that is his inability to shoot.