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Crosby, who was injured in Wednesday's quarterfinal game, will not play in the gold medal game against the United States. Gregory Shamus / Getty Images
MILAN — Sidney Crosby was ruled out for Sunday’s Olympic men’s gold medal game.
Team Canada’s all-time leading scorer in best-on-best Olympics tried all he could to play in Sunday’s game but couldn’t make it work. Crosby was injured in Wednesday’s quarterfinal win over the Czech Republic on a hit from defenseman Radko Gudas, his right leg bending underneath him on the play.
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Crosby missed Friday’s semifinal win over Finland and then set his sights on trying to come back for the gold medal game, skating Saturday at a Team Canada practice that was closed to media.
Head coach Jon Cooper said he would meet with his superstar leader Saturday night and see where things were. “We’ll see, I watched him skate today,” Cooper said Saturday. “… We’re going to meet tonight and have a determination of what’s going to happen tomorrow. He won’t put himself in harm’s way, he’s not going to put the team in harm’s way.
“Obviously we’d love to have him, but that determination will be made tonight.”
Cooper ruled out dressing Crosby as the 13th forward just to have him on the bench to cheer on his teammates.
“No, it’s too important, we don’t want to have someone in there as an inspiration when we could have a player in there capable of helping,” Cooper said. “You never know if guys are going to get hurt in a game. And he wouldn’t want to do that either.”
These are likely the final Olympic Games for the 38-year-old Crosby, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in 2010 and 2014.
“I mean, he’s the guy that showed all the young guys, young players growing up, what it means to be Canadian, what it means to be a Canadian hockey player,” said defenseman Drew Doughty. “Getting to play with him, I mean, I even feel that being a teammate of his. So that just shows you how special it is.”
Team Canada will also be without top-four defenseman Josh Morrissey (upper body) for Sunday’s gold medal game. Morrissey was injured in Canada’s Olympic opening game, and despite practicing with Team Canada a couple of times since, couldn’t get the green light to return.
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Pierre LeBrun has been a senior NHL columnist for The Athletic since 2017. He has been an NHL Insider for TSN since 2011 following six years as a panelist on Hockey Night In Canada. He also appears regularly on RDS in Montreal. Pierre previously covered the NHL for ESPN.com and The Canadian Press. Follow Pierre on Twitter @PierreVLeBrun
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