Crosby adjusting just fine

PITTSBURGH – Mario Lemieux, not one given to tossing out superlatives about 18-year-olds, has a one-word description of the player who seems destined to replace him as the Pittsburgh Penguins’ superstar-in-residence: Amazing.

Each time Sidney Crosby plays, opposing scouts sit in the press box and compare notes about him, and they can be heard relating the exceptional plays they’ve seen him make and contemplating what is still to come over the next, oh, 15 to 20 years.

The backhander that froze goalie Jose Theodore to decide the first shootout in the Montreal Canadiens’ history. The breakaway to beat Philadelphia in overtime the same night a Derian Hatcher stick to his mouth gave him four stitches in his lip and several chipped teeth. His goal against Washington where he split two defenders to score. The spinning, no-look pass from one knee directly onto Ziggy Palffy’s stick for a goal against the Capitals.

Pretty good season, huh? Not quite – for Crosby, it’s merely the first quarter of his first NHL season, one in which he has drawn comparisons to a teenage Wayne Gretzky, created the kind of first-season stir that no Penguins player since Lemieux has generated and, yes, maybe made his first enemy or two.

So much for the theory rookies need an indoctrination period before they are accepted into the league. First, they must get roughed up a few times, shut down by goalies far superior to any they have opposed before and spend time adjusting to the speed and flow of the NHL game.

Crosby needed about two games to do all of that and, ever since, has been the Penguins’ best player and one of the league’s best.

To the Penguins, that’s been the one surprise about Crosby: He has been even better than expected.

They knew the points would come from the No. 1 draft pick, but not this many so soon – 27 points in 22 games, a pace equivalent to Lemieux’s 100-point season as a rookie in 1984-85. A pace better than that of 2003-04 NHL scoring champion Martin St. Louis of Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay.

The Penguins knew the passing and playmaking were there, but not like this, with stylish flourishes and game-to-game innovations that have impressed even veteran teammates Mark Recchi, John LeClair and Palffy.

Said Palffy, “You never know what to expect.”