Sidney Crosby's Cole Harbour pals wear all his old jerseys to Penguins game
'A lot of us had some of these jerseys already and we just took it from there'
Sidney Crosby is used to seeing fans from Nova Scotia come to Pittsburgh to watch him play, but rarely are they so easy to spot.
Over the Easter weekend two dozen of Crosby's friends from Cole Harbour, N.S., were in the stands at the PPG Paints Arena, each wearing a different Crosby jersey from all the teams the Penguins star has played for since he was a little kid.
"Most of us had either played with him or knew people who had played with him," said Matt Foston, a Cole Harbour native who is a longtime friend of the National Hockey League superstar. "A lot of us had some of these jerseys already and we just took it from there and started rounding the rest of them up."
The jerseys included several variations of Pittsburgh Penguins jersey, as well as Team Canada jerseys worn by Crosby at the Olympics, world championship tournaments and the World Cup of Hockey.
Some hunted down from overseas
There was also a Rimouski Oceanic jersey from his two years in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Securing some of the lesser-known jerseys took some effort. For instance, getting a Shattuck-St. Mary's Crosby jersey from when he played prep school hockey in Minnesota was tough.
"A couple of them had to be ordered from overseas, including the Shattuck one," said Foston. "The rest of them we were able to get from different groups of people."
Maybe the jersey that stood out most was a Crosby Timbits jersey, from the minor-sports sponsorship program run by the coffee chain.
Most of the people on the trip wouldn't fit into it, so Justin Dowding got to wear it.
"I think he had a good time and had a good laugh about it," said Foston. "After Sid and the Pens won the first game we saw, we said we couldn't change anything so he got stuck with it again for the second game."
Sweater from earliest playing days
Crosby had an assist in the Penguins 5-2 win over Montreal on Saturday, but no points in a 3-1 loss to Washington on Sunday.
Other jerseys that were proudly on display included:
- Truro Bearcats. Crosby played in two games with the Maritime Junior Hockey League team when he was only 14.
- Dartmouth Subways. Crosby's midget team played for the national championship in 2002.
- Cole Harbour Red Wings. Crosby played in the Red Wings system during his pre-teen years.