May 17, 2014 By John Steigerwald for The 5 min read

Maybe Sidney Crosby should just quit.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. He shared a home with a former Best Player in the World who quit when he was 31 years old.

Yep. That’s what Mario Lemieux did after the 1996-97 season and when he did everybody understood. They knew he was fed up with the stupidity of the NHL. If you were around back then, you remember that Lemieux made it known that he was going to retire after that season, so it wasn’t a shock when the guy who led the league in scoring with 50 goals and 72 assists decided to pack it in.

Think about that for a second. This wasn’t a broken down player, who was struggling to play up to the ridiculous standard that he had set for himself. This was a 50-goal scorer saying that he had had enough with the NHL’s refusal to enforce the rules and was walking away. Not to become a team executive or owner. That would come later. He was headed for the golf course and as far away as he could get from the game he loved.

That just doesn’t happen in sports.

The most talented player ever to pick up a hockey stick just couldn’t deal with the stupidity anymore.

Well, guess what. The stupidity is back. Big time.

Everybody agrees that Sidney Crosby needed to play better in the playoffs this year and some people have come to believe that he didn’t play well in the playoffs last year.

In reality, he was the leading scorer in the post season before he and the entire team were shut down for four games by the Boston Bruins.

Whatever you think of Don Cherry, he is the most famous and most listened to hockey commentator in Canada. He has been around professional hockey for exactly 60 years as a player, coach and commentator. During his Coaches Corner segment on the CBC, during Game 6 between the Bruins and the Canadiens, Cherry showed video of Crosby being illegally banged around by the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Rangers. Then he said, “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve never seen a star player take this kind of abuse.” He made a reference to Lemieux and even showed some video of Darius Kasparaitis of the New York Islanders in 1993 slamming his head into the glass and not being penalized.

Whatever you think of Cherry, be aware that his entire career as Canada’s number one hockey personality has been spent ridiculing players for whining about taking physical abuse and he has done many segments accusing Crosby of complaining too much to the referees.

And he said that he has never seen a player take more abuse. Cherry criticized Crosby’s teammates for not standing up for him and blamed it all on the instigator rule, but the point is that Crosby took a ridiculous amount of un-penalized abuse.

Do you know how many penalties Sidney Crosby drew in 13 games against the Blue Jackets and Rangers?

Two.

There were at least five penalties in the video sample that Cherry showed to a national audience.

The stupidity is back.

The guy who walked away from the game because of the league’s refusal to enforce rules meant to allow talent and skill to be rewarded is now the owner of a team that has suffered the most from the same kind of stupidity.

He just spent four weeks watching his protégé and his successor as Best Player in the World put up with exactly what forced him to leave the sport. I believe that qualifies as ironic.

The seed for Lemieux’s decision to retire early was planted in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals. The Penguins lost to the Florida Panthers in seven games. Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr scored a combined two goals in the series. If the rules had been enforced, the Panthers might not have won a game. The league, instead of having two of the best players ever to put on a pair of skates playing in the Stanley Cup Final, got a team full of clutchers, grabbers and cheaters.

And Lemieux knew he couldn’t say anything because that would make him a whiner. Anybody who pointed to the stupidity of not allowing stars to shine and rewarding quasi-talented players by ignoring common sense, century-old rules was called an apologist.

That may be the worst thing about the NHL’s stupidity. It makes smart people with common sense look like whiners and apologists.

Thursday night I was watching an Eastern Conference preview show on the NHL Network. That’s the network that is, you know, owned by the NHL. One of the analysts, Kelly Chase, was lamenting the fact that too many penalties had been called the previous night in Game 6 between the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings. He said the referees need to get out of the way and let the players play and went on and on about what a thrill he gets out of seeing fourth liners shine.

Chase played in the NHL for 12 years.

He scored 17 goals and had 36 assists.

And 2017 penalty minutes.

This is the guy the NHL pays to tell everybody how the game should be played?

The turmoil surrounding the Pittsburgh Penguins is a big story locally and nationally, but it’s also the small picture and too many people are missing the big one.

The big story is that the stupidity is back and nobody knows it better than the owner of the team that is harmed by it the most.

He should do something about it before the Best Player in the World follows in his footsteps.

Out the door.

Oh, and one last thing.

I apologize.