If you haven't seen it by now then you better have a good excuse.  Alexander Semin of the Washington Capitals lashed out, intentional or not, at our boy Sidney Crosby this past weekend in what has easily become one of the more controversial statements to hit the Net/TV/Radio.

“It’s not like I need a reason to be motivated,” Crosby said. “I feel like I’m a pretty motivated person anyways. I don’t feel like that kind of stuff changes the way I play. I’ve been criticized before. It’s one of those things I have to deal with. I don’t read into it a whole lot.”

Sidney Crosby
Penguins Web Site

So there ya have it.  Nothing overly special, right? 

There's been talk coming from all sides of this story that say Semin's translator may have misconstrued his intentional phrasing, others may say it carried "malicious" intent.  Either way you look at it, this is all just part of the game. 

Sean Leahy from Going Five Hole and Yahoo's PuckDaddy was pretty mad about the way in which the quote blew up.  He has a few other examples of poor referencing by the mainstream media on his page.  Fittingly, Sean was also upset that the media was constantly referencing Yahoo! and not Greg and the PuckDaddy blog.  Rest assured though Sean, the Penguins' site references Greg and not just "Yahoo."

As for my two cents, how did this even get as big as it did? 

I think it may have something to do with the general sense of modesty that surrounds hockey players on a regular basis compared to that of, say, a Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver who changed his name to literally mean eighty-five in Spanish. 

No touchdown dances, no home run trots - hockey players know that whatever you say or do on or off the ice will eventually come full circle.  Sid and Semin will both back it up on the ice.  Crosby already said he doesn't need the motivation, and clearly with the way Semin's season is taking off for him, he doesn't either.

So I ask, can we finally put this thing to rest?