wild/nhl

Don't get Sidney Crosby wrong.

The Pittsburgh Penguins superstar, and the player many believe is the best in the NHL, badly wants to skate onto the Xcel Energy Center ice for the first time tonight and beat the Wild.

But he does have a soft spot for the team, too.

When "Sid the Kid" really was a kid, or more accurately a hotshot teenager burning out red goal lights for fun at Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault, Minn., Crosby, like thousands of Minnesotans, got caught up in Wild Fever. It was 2003, and the Wild was in the midst of its Cinderella run to the Western Conference finals. Crosby, a native of Nova Scotia, was 15 years old attending the Minnesota boarding school/hockey haven, and he spent many nights cheering on the Wild down at 7th and Kellogg.

"When Minnesota made the run there, I was lucky enough to see all the playoff games and go to games as a fan," Crosby said during a telephone interview. "I went to five or 10 games during the year, too, and every game was sold out. Even for a regular-season game, the atmosphere there is pretty amazing.

"But in the playoffs, especially, it was a fun place to be. I remember thinking, 'Boy, this would be a cool place to play,' so it's kind of fun that I'm going to have a chance to finally play there."Finally" is the right word. Crosby, who at 20 is the youngest captain in NHL history, has dominated his first two seasons like no other teenager in history.

As an 18-year-old rookie, he became the youngest player ever to score 100 points (102). At 19, he became the first teenager in major pro team sports history to win a scoring title, scoring 120 points (36 goals, 84 assists), and became the seventh player to win the Hart Trophy (MVP), Art Ross Trophy (leading scorer) and Lester Pearson Trophy (Outstanding Player as voted by NHLPA members) in the same season.

Yet tonight will be the first opportunity for Wild fans to see the flashy No. 87 -- dubbed "the Next One" -- up close and personal.

Because of the unbalanced schedule, Eastern and Western Conference teams travel to only one division in the other conference each season. So tonight's contest will be Crosby's first in a Northwest Division road city.

Next season, that's expected to change. In order to ensure young stars such as Crosby play in Western cities more often, the NHL will alter its schedule.

His first visit to the Northwest

"I'm excited to play [in the Northwest] because they're all full houses and hockey cities," said Crosby, who scored 72 goals and 162 points in 57 games for Shattuck-St. Mary's in 2002-03. "It's exciting to go on the road and know there's a challenge of going into a building that's full of fans that are probably all against you.

"Sometimes that motivates you, even if it's not your own crowd."

That's all the Wild needs -- a more motivated Crosby. The kid's good enough, with the hype following him since he was 13.

This is a guy that did GQ and Vanity Fair photo shoots before he ever came to his first NHL training camp. He has been on the "Tonight Show." He has endorsement deals with Reebok, Gatorade and Canadian-based coffee/donut shop Tim Hortons. A number of books have been written about him, and remember, he turned 20 in August.

This type of treatment usually is reserved for football, baseball and basketball players.

"The media and promotional requests are non-stop," said Tom McMillan, the Penguins' vice president of communications for 12 years who worked as a writer and broadcaster in Pittsburgh for 17.

So McMillan knows superstars, especially with the Penguins. He was there with Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, but that was in a day where there wasn't a 24-hour sports appetite in Canada and the United States.