Who's Really at Fault for the Sidney Crosby Arrest Report?

It’s the kind of headline that jumps out at a sports fan and slaps them in the face: Sidney Crosby, Arrested. It’s also a headline that couldn’t be further than the truth, according to Ottawa Police.

The Ottawa Sun posted a short piece overnight Tuesday reporting that Pittsburgh Penguins captain and reigning Hart Trophy winner Sidney Crosby had been arrested on some sort of “driving-related” charge, quoting the QMI Agency as its source. The report claimed that Crosby had been booked while driving a rented Porsche in the Ottawa area.

If this story didn’t add up to you already, you weren’t alone. Crosby has never had any problems with the law and is known for his grueling offseason training schedule. To think he’d have the mildest run-in with law enforcement is difficult to believe to begin with, even more so when word came out that he wasn’t even in Canada Tuesday night.

The Penguins released a statement Wednesday morning saying Crosby wasn’t in Canada and had not been arrested.

The Ottawa police department supports that claim, telling The Canadian Press “it never happened.”

So, after all this, where did this report come from in the first place? Surely it had to have some serious backing from the newsroom to even see the light of day. When you’re dealing with the golden boy of the NHL, you make sure to check your facts – at least you’d think that’s what you ought to do. Then again, stories that pop up overnight have been the undoing of many a newsroom without trained staff on hand to weigh fact from fiction.

QMI’s response came Wednesday in a statement: “There was no basis for the story and QMI unreservedly retracts the story in its entirety. QMI regrets the error.”

Retracting the story is one thing, but it still doesn’t bring us any closer to the bottom of what actually happened. QMI is obviously at fault for leading everyone down this rabbit hole to begin with and the Ottawa Sun is nearly as guilty reporting a story without the simplest fact-checking it would have taken to realize Crosby was in Canada. That’s on the Sun, and they too should make a statement before tidying up their newsroom.

So, what does it leave us with in the end? Probably nothing more than another case of some bad journalism and the fact that the NHL season can’t start soon enough.

Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins are set at +1200 to win the 2015 Stanley Cup.