Joe Starkey: Crosby-Malkin-Letang — one of the greatest sports stories ever told

Joe Starkey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When I was young and watching all the Buffalo sports teams lose in much the same gut-splitting fashion the Sabres lost Wednesday night at PPG Paints Arena, one of the books that captured my imagination was called “Strange But True Football Stories.” 

It told of Tom Dempsey, born with half a right foot and fitted with a specially-made shoe, kicking a 63-yard field goal to win a game.

It told of the Cumberland College football team losing a 220-0 squeaker to Georgia Tech.

It told of a man named Jim Marshall running 66 yards the wrong way with a football (long before Diontae Johnson came along) and a man named Tommy Lewis leaping off the sidelines to make a tackle in the 1954 Cotton Bowl. 

I couldn’t help but think of that book as I sat in front of my television Wednesday night, watching one of the wackiest, wildest games in Penguins history. And that’s saying something.

This was a game we’ll never forget — and for me, it wasn’t one play in particular, although Malkin scoring goal No. 500 from his keister could certainly find a place in “Strange But True Hockey Stories.” It was far more than that.

It was a tragicomedy that turned into a classic, which also works as a description of the Penguins’ entire franchise history.

You had star power flashing all over the place, Hall of Famers left and right combining on highlight-reel goals. You had the Penguins running around like headless horsemen half the night, like the Harlem Globetrotters accidentally losing to the Washington Generals. You had the Sabres springing for more odd-man breaks than a pre-game warmup. You had angry fans booing goaltender Tristan Jarry off the ice and cheering a precocious young goalie named Joel Blomqvist who just might be the next big thing around here.

Cheers and tears by the bucket-full, baby. That is Penguins hockey. That is Penguins history. I half expected the team to declare bankruptcy in the middle of the second period.

But they never leave you bored, do they?

This, truly, is a unique franchise in American sports history. And the story that stands out above all in watching that game Wednesday was the miracle that is Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang.

How are they still playing together, and not just playing but still performing as central characters?

All of sports history, not to mention the physics of growing old, would tell you that two of the three, at least, should be done by now. Go look at the longest tenures by one player with one team in any sport, and most of them are slightly more than 20 years. All three of these guys might get there!

Malkin leads the league in scoring. Crosby — who tallied his 1,600th point Wednesday and of course assisted on Malkin’s milestone goal — again last year was voted by colleagues as the best all-around player in the world. Letang has three points in five games and still logs more than 23 minutes a night. Think of what they have overcome. Letang survived two strokes. Crosby lost a chunk of his prime on account of concussions. Malkin has beaten two major knee surgeries.

Last October, when the trio began their 18th season together, they passed New York Yankees legends Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada as the longest-tenured trio of teammates in major North American professional sports history.

I would imagine a lot of us measure a series of major life events against the careers of Crosby, Malkin and Letang. I wasn’t even married when the Penguins drafted them. Now I have a 16-year-old daughter learning to drive (not fun). I went back and re-read some of the stories and timelines around the Penguins winning the lottery for Crosby and saw this little nugget from the year 2005: “Feb. 14: YouTube, an American online video sharing and social media platform, was launched ... ”

YouTube hadn’t been invented yet!

Then think of how they all got here — Crosby on a 6.25% chance in the draft lottery, Malkin smuggled from Finland after fleeing his Russian team, Letang arriving in the third round of the draft, one of the greatest picks in Penguins history.

All of that was happening when the Penguins played in a building that no longer exists. When these three and others joined forces, we wondered what the future held. We wondered if they could win a championship. They did. They won three. They grew up together. They grew old together — they are now a combined 109.

And they’re still playing hockey. Still combining for magical goals. Still winning crazy games.

What a story.