Sidney Crosby back on the ice for the first time on monday march 14 , 2011 since missing 29 games due to a concussion.
The routine starts with Frank Buonomo, a Pittsburgh Penguins executive who is usually found in the dressing room standing next to a stall adorned with No. 87.
"Is he talking today, Frank?" a reporter will ask.
"No, not today," is invariably the response.
Buonomo is the face of the Penguins strategy in dealing with Sidney Crosby and his concussion - one that works well for the NHL team, if not for the fans and media hungry for any scrap of news about when the injured centre might play again.
The Penguins captain will only speak to the media when he makes another step in his recovery and Buonomo stands guard at his dressing-room stall to keep away inquisitive newshounds. Crosby will indulge in a little banter with team officials and the odd reporter when he comes off the ice, but bringing up his health is strictly verboten.
The Pens' problem is they have no information about when Crosby will play again, given the vagaries of concussions.
"Fans and media find this hard to accept because they want more information. But we don't have it," general manager Ray Shero said Thursday, as his team prepared for the second game of its best-of-seven first-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The evidence supports Shero as even Crosby's father says he does not have the answer. (Troy Crosby does not grant many interviews on the subject of his son's concussion but he admitted this in a brief conversation shortly before the Penguins' 3-0 win in the first game of the Eastern Conference quarter-final on Wednesday.)
Since Troy Crosby is a dedicated hockey fan as well as a father, his further admission that he planned to return home to Cole Harbour, N.S., before Game 2 and wasn't sure if he would return for any more games in this series made it clear he thinks his son will not be dressing for any first-round games.
Meanwhile, the Penguins have to deal with the distraction in the middle of the playoffs, one that is compounded by Matt Cooke's situation. Cooke was suspended for the last 10 games of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs for a blindside hit to the head but he, too, is now practising with the team again.
The decision was to limit Sidney Crosby's exposure to the media and cut off Cooke's entirely. In Crosby's case, initially, the Penguins said they would not issue any progress reports, which did not go over well. "Everybody got pissed off at that," Shero said Thursday.
Next was a compromise, in which Crosby would only speak to the media when he progressed a step in his recovery - the latest being a scrum in Florida on April 1, when Crosby took part in a regular practice for the first time since he was knocked out of the lineup on Jan. 5.
"To not talk until he makes his next progression probably makes the most sense for everybody," Shero said. "Sid doesn't want to be the focal point every day because he's not playing."
Updates on Crosby's conditions are the responsibility of head coach Dan Bylsma. Someone will ask, almost apologetically, during his daily press conference if there is an update and Bylsma will usually say no.
When the next update comes, it will be that Crosby is cleared by the team doctor for contact in practice. If he can handle it without any recurrence of concussion symptoms and passes the usual neuropsychological tests, Crosby will be in position to be cleared to play.
In order for that to happen, he will have to show comparable results in his latest neuropsychological tests to the ones he took before training camp last fall, when he was healthy. The final approval will come from the team doctor.
No one can say when that will be, although it is clear by how hard Crosby works in practice he is aiming to play before the Penguins' playoff run ends. This resulted in some nervous joking around the dressing room about who will be the first one to hit Crosby in practice.
Fourth-liner and veteran journeyman Mike Rupp said it was not going to be him. But Crosby's good friend and team funny man Max Talbot said, no sweat, he'd do it.