When you play Pittsburgh,” Howard Cosell once said, “you have to play the whole city.”
And when you play the City That Self-Awareness Forgot, you have to listen to a litany of the most banal, mundane accomplishments in the history of human civilization.
What are Pittsburghers proud of?
First, a particular method of making a left turn, which they tout as a unique amalgamation of politeness and ingenuity — a maneuver only people born at the nexus of three rivers could have devised.
Second, they are really proud of the rivers too, even though only one is of any consequence. This would be like Nashville acting like the Stones and Harpeth were some great thoroughfares of commerce instead of thoroughfares of drunk idiots and canoes, respectively.
Third, Pittsburghers love to tell you about how great they are at waving towels, as if in the thousands of years humans have been drying themselves off, no one ever thought to spin one above the head until a bunch of Yinzers did it. But don’t even think of making fun of the Terrible Towel, because Pittsburgh treats those things like mass-produced Shrouds of Turin, even though 86 percent of them smell like an unholy combination of skunky Yuengling (not that anyone can tell the difference between a fresh Yuengling and an out-of-date one), french-fry grease, coleslaw and spent petcoke, like a bar towel from Satan’s Man Cave.
Finally — and more to the point for our purposes — they are very proud of having drafted Sidney Crosby to play for their beloved Penguins, a team most of them didn’t know they had until 1984, and that they all forgot about until 2005.
The Pens ended up with Crosby in a rather dubious fashion. The NHL, having canceled the entire season in 2004, had to come up with a way to award the No. 1 draft pick and devised a complicated system that involved the awarding of pingpong balls based on performance in the previous three seasons. In no way whatsoever was any consideration given to the fact that the Penguins were in the midst of their second bankruptcy and dangerously close to folding or relocating, a sort of situation that could be rectified if one of the most gifted players of all time happened to end up on the roster.
Lo and behold, guess who won the draft lottery — suspiciously held in a locked closet.
It was the second No. 1 draft pick in three years for the Pens. In 2003, sitting at the top of the board in one of the deepest drafts of all time, the team selected goalie Marc-André Fleury, who has since become best known for getting replaced by literally anyone within earshot of the Pittsburgh bench during the playoffs.
Of course, all of this fortune — which was definitely not engineered by the National Hockey League because the Pens are owned by one of the league’s all-time greats in Mario Lemieux (who ended up a Pen in 1984 because Pittsburgh put on a tank job George S. Patton would be proud of) — has resulted in resounding success in the Steal, uh, Steel City.
Two Stanley Cups in the Lemieux years and two more since Crosby’s arrival, including last season. If you were to draw a comparison to the New England Patriots, it would be fair, except Sidney Crosby makes Bill Belichick look like Daniel Craig.
This isn’t to say the Penguins are wholly unlikable. American hero Amanda Kessel’s brother Phil plays for the team, and like P.K. Subban, he was unfairly run out of a Canadian team by unnecessary media scrutiny. Former Nashville Predator Patric Hornqvist (coincidentally the last pick in the draft in which Crosby was first) is in Pittsburgh, tucking pucks in the net and — now that he wears a different shade of yellow, we can say this — falling down anytime an opponent looks at him too hard. Fellow ex-Predator Matt Cullen pivots the fourth line for the Pens, except for one hour each week when he sits in the locker room and watches the latest episode of NCIS.
Then there’s their defense corps. There’s … um, hmm ... Ron Hainsey, who has great hair and has led the league in the critical “That guy is still playing?” category since 2009. There’s Mark Streit, who has been the fifth-best Swiss blueliner in the NHL for years, even in seasons where he was the only Swiss blueliner in the league. And who can forget Ian Cole? Nobody, though many have tried.
Sure, the Pens are the hockey version of a mayonnaise sandwich (with french fries and coleslaw, because a true Yinzer won’t even eat a bowl of Grape-Nuts without adding french fries and coleslaw). But look at the murderer’s row they had to overcome to get to the Finals this year:
A five-game dispatch of the Columbus Blue Jackets, a team that’s three years away from being a legitimate contender, except that they won’t be.
A hard-fought seven-game series against longtime nemesis Washington. Pittsburgh, as usual, managed to be the Caps’ dance partner for their annual second-round departure, a springtime ritual rivaled only by the Cherry Blossom Festival in our nation’s capital.
Another seven-gamer against the Ottawa Senators, who play a style of hockey so boring the Penguins plan to offer it a max contract to play on Crosby’s wing in the offseason.
Like many teams, the Pens reflect their city well. A handful of supremely gifted artisans surrounded by a bunch of workaday salarymen, coming together to produce impressive, if ultimately prosaic accomplishments.
Sure, a 100-foot I-beam looks great … for an I-beam. But give us the raucous rowdiness of a canyon of gold instead.
If Flashdance taught us anything, it’s that dancing is more fun than steel mills. And even Jennifer Beals — Pittsburgh’s most famous cultural export, even though she’s from Chicago — is pulling for Preds.
