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Penguin's Sidney Crosby chases a "Little Penguin" participant during the 11th annual Little Penguins Learn to Play Hockey program at the UMPC Lemieux Sports Complex Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019 in Cranberry Twp. The program provides free head-to-toe hockey equipment to 2000 youngsters aged 4-9 each year. This year, 100 out of 2,000 young players in the program randomly received "Golden Tickets" when they picked up their gear to win a chance skate with Crosby.
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Sidney Crosby is players' choice for best in NHL

Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette

Sidney Crosby is players' choice for best in NHL

Sidney Crosby is a ways down the list of NHL scoring leaders this season, and he hasn’t been named league MVP since 2014. Still, his peers think he remains the alpha dog in the sport. 

Polling of NHL locker rooms published Thursday by The Athletic found that a 48 percent plurality of players consider the Penguins captain the “best all-around player” in the league.

That figure puts him comfortably ahead of Edmonton’s Conor McDavid, the reigning MVP who was second in the poll with 25 percent support. No one else was anywhere close, as Boston’s Patrice Bergeron (11 percent), Florida’s Aleksander Barkov (4 percent) and Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov rounded out the top five. 

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Other members of the Penguins’ organization were conspicuously excluded in responses to subsequent polls, however.

Kris Letang has been out since this play, when Shayne Gostisbehere of the Flyers tackled him last Saturday.
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Despite helping the team win a pair of championships in 2016 and ‘17, Matt Murray wasn’t among goalies players would want in their net for Game 7 of a hypothetical Stanley Cup Final.

Rather, Montreal’s Carey Price topped the list with 28 percent support. Vegas netminder Marc-Andre Fleury, the man Murray replaced in the Penguins’ net, was second with 16 percent of the vote, and he was followed by Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy (15 percent), Los Angeles’ Jonathan Quick and Washington’s Braden Holtby (6 percent).

Mike Sullivan was similarly snubbed. Players left him off the list of top five coaches players would most want to play for aside from their own. Instead, Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper and Vegas’ Gerard Gallant were the top choices. Each received 23 percent of the vote.  

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Fortunately, there also weren’t any Penguins listed in the more dubious polls for most overrated player and coach players least want to play for. Nashville defenseman P.K. Subban and Columbus coach John Tortorella topped those lists, respectively. 

In other votes, Las Vegas was named players’ preferred road destination and home of the best fans. Winnipeg was voted the worst road city, while Florida took the dishonor for worst fans. 

Also of note: A robust 99 percent of respondents said NHL players should appear in the Olympics. This a year after they were prevented from playing in the 2018 games in South Korea.

Adam Bittner: abittner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @fugimaster24. 

First Published: February 28, 2019, 9:28 p.m.

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Penguin's Sidney Crosby chases a "Little Penguin" participant during the 11th annual Little Penguins Learn to Play Hockey program at the UMPC Lemieux Sports Complex Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019 in Cranberry Twp. The program provides free head-to-toe hockey equipment to 2000 youngsters aged 4-9 each year. This year, 100 out of 2,000 young players in the program randomly received "Golden Tickets" when they picked up their gear to win a chance skate with Crosby.  (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)
Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette
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