Sidney Crosby: Islanders Fans “Didn’t Show A Lot of Class” Cheering on His Injury

Sidney Crosby miraculously doesn’t have a broken nose, but he has a broken heart after the way Islanders fans cheered him off the ice after he took a puck to his face in Tuesday’s game at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Crosby took a puck directly to his face, and many thought that he had been either knocked unconscious, suffered a serious head injury or at the very least broken his nose.

But one thing not a whole lot of people expected was to have Sidney Crosby cheered off the ice in a jeering fashion by the fans in attendance. That’s exactly what happened, and today Crosby is reflecting on the incident with not a whole lot of warm feelings for Isles fans.

“The fans didn’t show a lot of class,” he said today prior to the Pen’s home game versus Washington Captials. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Well, if Sid the Kid wouldn’t do it, Lord knows no one should do it. The fact of the matter is, this is hockey and these kinds of things happen all the time. Was it a Todd Bertuzzi like assault, no; but while it’s never good to see a young and talented player get injured in such a way Crosby wasn’t decapitated by the puck and he wasn’t sprawled out on the ice in a coma.

FIrst of all, it was a deflection that his his face, it wasn’t a slap shot to his teeth that some suggest. Secondly, he came back into the game and played, so it obviously wasn’t that serious. If nothing else, Crosby deserves some credit from his haters since he came back into the game after taking a puck in the face.

So if some fans — or an entire arena of drunken New Yorkers– want to cheer after seeing something you see quite often in hockey, who’s to tell them they can’t. This isn’t the Christian League of Chess we’re talking about, or the Roman Catholic Bowling team — it’s the NHL, where the less teeth you have the more respected you are.

What this also proves, is that people still hate Sidney Crosby, and despite a lockout and a lot of time to think about things, there are still scored of fans that would rather see him take a puck in his grill than admit they tolerate him.

Was it in poor taste to cheer, more than likely. But was it a criminal offense, no so let’s not try to bastardize a bunch of New York Islanders hockey fans because in reality they don’t have much else going for them.