It's not as if Sidney Crosby was going all Babe Ruth and calling his own shot.
If only because it was never going to be his shot.
Nor even the shot of the person to whom he'd get the puck.
"The great players, the really great players, they see what's going to happen two, three plays ahead," Patric Hornqvist was telling me at his stall late Wednesday night, slightly shaking his head as he ran his fingers through still-sweaty hair. "Honestly, I don't even know what to think about things like that."
Not many have. Or ever will. Not in a team sport, anyway, which relies intrinsically on individuals to come together with a minimal amount of chaos. Some will, but most won't. And the mere thought process of attempting to orchestrate it all ... well, Hornqvist put it best: It's well beyond most mortals' thought process.
Crosby, it's safe to say, isn't most mortals. And anyone who'd ever dared doubt that -- or, for that matter, his status as the planet's singularly greatest hockey player -- just experienced an extraordinary lesson to the contrary.
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