A Penguins teammate told Sidney Crosby about the $10,000 reward dangled by Reebok Canada over the weekend for the safe return of Crosby’s wayward Olympic equipment. He is hoping the offer works.
“I appreciate them wanting to help me,” Crosby said Sunday after he had an assist in a 2-1 win against Boston at Mellon Arena.
The missing items are the stick and gloves he used when he scored the winning goal in overtime Feb. 28 to give Canada a 3-2 win against the United States in the gold-medal game in Vancouver. He tossed them during the immediate celebration, and they were nowhere to be found when equipment was sorted a little later.
There are reports that one glove was recovered, but Crosby knows nothing about that. He got his mouth guard back and is using it in Penguins games.
Officials at Reebok, which has an endorsement deal with Crosby and supplies his hockey gear, said there will be no questions asked and the items will be returned to the Penguins center, although footage from that evening at Canada Hockey Place apparently is being used to help identify whoever might have had the equipment.
While he is not bent on someone being punished for taking the gear, Crosby is eager to find it.
“They’re things that have meaning,” he said. “If somebody knows where it is, I’d definitely like to have it.”
He hasn’t decided what he will do with the items if they turn up. He has heard reports that the Hockey Hall of Fame would like them and said he might accommodate it with one or all of the missing pieces.
Crosby is incredibly fussy about his equipment, which is highly personalized by the time he uses it in games, so he doubts anyone could successfully replicate the items for the reward.
“If somebody can copy those, good luck,” he said.
Crosby had his jersey from the 2005 world junior tournament — where Canada won gold in Grand Forks, N.D. — stolen from his luggage. It later was returned.
“I don’t know if they realize the kind of attention it gets,” Crosby said of such stolen goods.
He guesses that if the idea is to sell the gear, “it would be done very privately, very discreetly.”
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