Sidney Crosby missed practice today after a fight with the Stars’ Matt Niskanen left his knuckles swollen, but he should be back in time to play tomorrow night in Anaheim.
Crosby doesn’t fight a whole lot, and it doesn’t matter a bit to me whether he can or not, but he handled himself pretty well in this one. On the last day of school in fifth grade, I got in a fight with a kid who ended up breaking his finger on my face. I thought it was pretty funny at the time that I ruined the first month of his summer vacation, but hurting your hand in a fight is definitely better than hurting, you know, your face. Not that that was really a possibility given the military-grade helmets both Crosby and Niskanen were wearing.
As you can see from the video, Crosby has Niskanen off balance from pretty much the beginning, but as one of the commenters points out, the blow Crosby lands at 0:13 pretty much seals the deal.