Destiny's Child

NOW HE HAS THE GOLD MEDAL TOO, HOCKEY'S OTHER majestic prize, this one earned not just on behalf of his teammates and his "organization" but also on behalf of his entire country. He can bring it back to his hometown—COLE HARBOUR, HOME OF SIDNEY CROSBY, as the sign reads—past the storefronts and businesses lining Cole Harbour Road: the Petro-Canada station, Kyte's Pharmasave, Chris Brothers Meats. He can bring it home just as he brought home the Stanley Cup in the summer of 2009, when many tens of thousands of people gathered outside to welcome him and when, upon seeing them all there crowded and cheering and proud on the sidewalks of his youth, Crosby began to weep. He can return yet again as the triumphant prodigal son, the best player on the best team of—and here he will have the medal to prove it—the greatest hockey-playing country in the world.

If Sidney Crosby was destined for this—a career in which at age 22 he has won an NHL MVP award, the Stanley Cup and now 20.3 ounces of Olympic gold—that destiny began in Cole Harbour, at the house a few minutes from the sports store that supplied the tape for his first sticks, the stone to sharpen his little blades. His parents, Troy and Trina, may have struggled to pay the mortgage, to buy oil for a few months' heat, but they made damn sure that Sidney had new skates each season, and cash enough to pay for the next tournament motel. There was always space to roam in Cole Harbour, no traffic or crowds, and a rare quiet; you could hear your feet there, crunching in snow, slapping pavement. On dim Sunday afternoons when he was 11 years old Sidney would split the paper route with his mom, going three hours door-to-door to deliver the weekly shopper.

His parents know hockey and the sacrifice it demands. Trina Crosby, 44, all but grew up at a rink waiting on two older brothers who played; one of them reached college level and earned a minor league tryout that went nowhere. Troy, a goalie, got closer, just enough to taste it. The Canadiens chose him as their last pick in the 1984 draft, and he played two years in the Quebec Juniors before his career died. He was 22.

Still, he had a moment or two. Troy can still see future Pittsburgh legend Mario Lemieux, en route to shattering the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) scoring record during the 1983-84 season, rifling pucks past him, "but I stopped him on a couple breakaways too," he says. "Two in one shift."

Yet Troy never deluded himself. Asked how it felt to play against one of the game's greatest talents, Troy, now retired after years as a facilities manager at a law firm, shrugs. "I wished I was him, actually," he says. "I wished I had that: When he was 18, he had the world in front of him. He was Mario Lemieux, and I wanted to be that player."

Instead he and his wife had that player. Sidney found his skating legs at three and never knew a day of clumsiness. "When he threw a baseball, it was like he was a 20-year-old, the form," Trina says. "That sounds ridiculous, I know, but when it came to motor skills, he could do everything." The lifeguard at Sidney's YMCA preschool couldn't hide her astonishment. "I've never seen a four-year-old," she told Trina, "with developed pecs before."

At seven he gave his first newspaper interview. "You have to do your best and work hard and things will happen," Sidney said. "You can make it if you try." Coaches noticed, year after year. Sidney wasn't just more talented: He loved the game, lived it harder than any teammate. "He'd call me to hang out when we were kids, and with other guys they're calling to come over and watch movies or play video games," says Mike Chiasson, 23, a goalie at Nova Scotia's Acadia University. "But with Sid you knew you were always going in his basement to play hockey, have a shootout. His passion, his hard work: That's what got him there."

Crosby had observed his parents. He remembered his dad on early mornings working out with the thought of becoming a firefighter. "I didn't see him play, but everything else he did, whether it was fixing a pipe under the house or whatever—he got it done," Sidney says. "He wasn't going to quit on it. If he told me he was going to do something, he did it; if he said, 'I'm going to bring you to practice today,' he didn't call and say, 'I can't make it.' He was always there."

The competitiveness was there too: Sidney wanted to beat his dad. Troy stepped out of the basement goal for good when the boy was eight and starting to lift the puck, left him down there alone to shoot for hours, the misses leaving the clothes dryer dented and scarred with black streaks. Troy sported a QMJHL championship ring he won with Verdun in 1985, and when the two would watch Hockey Night in Canada or the Olympics and talk about getting there someday, to Sidney that seemed too ambitious. But a QMJHL title ring? Going higher in the NHL draft than Troy did? He could see that.

Still, as Sidney kept playing up a year or two, as he tore through the Cole Harbour Timbits and Atom and Pee-Wee seasons, his name grew, and with fame came the ugly side of hockey fever. Titles were won, tournaments dominated, but resentment festered: He was too good. Whoever stopped him could make a name. By the time Sidney was 11, he'd sit in the stands during tournaments while waiting for his team's turn to play, wearing shoulder pads but no sweater; too often parents, seeing the name on his jersey, had jeered him to the point of tears. "I remember being in Pee-Wee, a guy trying to break my leg," Sidney says, swinging an imaginary stick to demonstrate. "It wasn't even during a play: I was going to a face-off, and a guy just two-handed it right at my knee—like a baseball bat."