Mario Lemieux was quick to shoot down Wednesday’s report that he and Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby have had a falling out.
“It’s absolutely not true. It’s silly,” Lemieux said, via the club’s Twitter account.
Lemieux was responding to former Penguins player and current analyst Matthew Barnaby, who said on Sirius XM that problems had created a rift between Crosby and Pittsburgh co-owner Lemieux.
“But the more and more I looked into it, the more I found out, people with the same sentiments that there’s a big falling out between Mario and Crosby. Now whether that pushes them to move him at some point? Whether he wants to move? That I don’t know,” Barnaby said on-air.
Listen here:
So why the rift?
“I’ve heard over coaching. I’ve heard also after the [2014] playoffs when they lost out,” Barnaby said on Sirius. “Maybe the personnel isn’t right.”
After Lemieux’s denial, Barnaby appeared on Sportsnet 590 The Fan’s Brady & Walker and stood by his report.
LISTEN: Matthew Barnaby stands by his report of rift between Crosby, Lemieux
With the Penguins struggling to score goals this season, Barnaby said he was tipped off to investigate the relationship between Crosby and fellow superstar Evgeni Malkin. Checking with his sources within the organization, Barnaby was told that Crosby and Malkin get along fine but that he should look into the Crosby-Lemieux relationship.
“I’m telling you what people who are closer to the situation than I have reported. They are not on good speaking terms,” Barnaby told Brady & Walker. “The common theme was [Crosby and Lemieux] weren’t on the same page, that there was a falling out after the ’14 playoffs when they lost out.
“I’ve heard that there is a rift, that conversations aren’t plenty between the two…. In seven years of doing this, I’ve never reported anything like this.”
The Penguins were expected to grow even more dangerous as an offensive powerhouse with the off-season addition of Phil Kessel, but their offence ranks 26th and has been subject to criticism this season.
Pittsburgh has a winning record (12-8-0) in spite of Crosby’s uncharacteristically low production. The captain has three goals, eight assists and a minus-9 rating through 20 games.
“For a star player as proud as he is, as good as he is, as dominant as he’s been throughout his career, I think it pisses him off that he doesn’t have more Stanley Cups to his resume,” Barnaby opined. “And if you look at their team now short-term, they’re not a Stanley Cup contender.”
(h/t Josh Cooper at Puck Daddy for Sirus XM quotes)
